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THE 



POETIC WORKS 



OF 

y 



/ 

FEANK CO WAN. 



It is the Poet's function to embody in his song, 

The spirit of the age and clime to which he may belong ; 

To feel, with comprehensive heart, think, with constructive mind. 

And voice the vital universe in numbers for mankind. — 

From The Plain of Tkoy, vol. 1, page 8U. 



IN THREE VOLUMES. 
I. 



GREENESBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA : 

THP: OLIVER PUBLISHING HOUSE; 

1892. 
CO 







71'^ 



J'RANK COWAN, 

1892. 



PREFACE AND ADVERTISEMENT 



As projected, the poetic works of the writer will 
be published in three volumes. 

This, the first, contains three collections of poems, 
each of which is the subject of a paragraph below, 
revealing in a measure the relation between them and 
the writer, his evolving individuality, his peculiar in- 
vestigations, and his ever-varying environment in the 
zigzag course of his travels in the northern and south- 
ern hemispheres twice around the globe — stitching to- 
gether, with the thread of his life, the sibylline leaves 
of his poetic fancy and philosophy, scattered far and 
wide by the winds that wander around the world. 

The second volume will contain Southwestern 
Pennsylvania in Song and Story : ( severed from the 
compilation, entitled The Battle Ballads, and Other 
Poems, of Southwestern Pennsylvania, with which it 
was published in 1878 : ) with prefatory notes, historic, 
anecdotic, and scientific : revised, and enlarged with 
the addition of several poems written since the publi- 
cation of the original volume, notably, The Battle of 
the Bison and the Unicorn, introducing the extinct 
bison. Bos latifrons, in conflict with the mythic unicorn 
of the early palaeontologists of Pennsylvania, Rhinoce- 
roides Alleghaniensis, and illustrating, ( like The Last 
OF THE Mammoths, the initial poem of the volume, ) 
prehistoric life and the supremacy gained by Man 
over the savage beasts of his environment by availing 
himself of the multiform weapon of fire ; The Last of 
the Mound-Builders, descriptive of the expulsion of 
the prehistoric semi-civilized, field-tilling and town- 



IV PREFACE AND ADVERTISEMENT, 

building, tribes of Southwestern Pennsylvania by the 
hunting savages found in possession of the territory Ity 
the Europeans on their arrival ; The Battle of Bushy 
Run, read, August 6th, 1883, at an anniversary celebra- 
tion of the decisive victory gained in 1763 by the Brit- 
ish forces, under the command of Colonel Henry Bou- 
quet, over the Redskins of Western Pennsylvania, un- 
der the leadership of Guyasutha, — a battle typical of 
the conquest of the savage New World by the civilized 
Old, and admitting a justification of the survival of the 
fittest in the struggle for existence among races as well 
as individuals ; and When Mammon Went a-Fjshin(; 
IN THE LocH OF Conemaugh, dcscriptivc of the destruc- 
tion of Johnstown, with an immediate loss of three 
thousand lives, on the 31st day of May, 1889, by the 
sudden, descent of a sea of waters, suspended, as a sum- 
mer plaything of a gilded coterie, until the fatal mo- 
ment, in a mountain gorge above the city, by a deli- 
([uescent wall of earth and straw ! 

The third volume will contain Faustina : A Fan- 
tasy OF Autumn in the Heart of Appalachia. This 
is a poem descriptive of the mountainous parts of 
Pennsylvania during the months of September, Octo- 
ber, and November — the American autumn ; the suc- 
cession of meteorologic phenomena, the characteristic 
flora and fauna, and the peculiar manners and customs 
of the people, every detail of which has been a special 
study, and its setting, in the poetic, philosophic, and 
fanciful mosaic of the comprehensive whole, the ulti- 
mate of the writer's art. Faustina, the Fated One, the 
personification of the season, is represented as a wife 
and mother, who, as the life of summer passes into the 
death of winter, decays and dies, leaving her babe to 
survive her, the symbol of the season's self-incapsulat- 
ing seeds. It is written in blank verse : the writer al- 
lowing himself, as a compensation for the exactions of 
accurate observation and precise expression, the latitude 
of a world-wandering sight-seer in the selection of his 



PEEFA(^E AND ADVERTISEMENT. V 

similes and images, and that of a lexicographer of the 
English language in its totality in the waling of his 
words. 

And oh, that I could be the mirror of 
The moment that I would! a bubble filmed 
With subtle sight and filled with sentient soul, 
That, bursting in the audient air, might voice 
The whole within a comprehending word ! — 

Faustina, Saturday, October, IStli. 

To recur now to the three collections contained in 
this, the first volume — 

The first, The Rime of a Rambler Twice Around 
THE World, is a fragmentary resultant of two tours of 
the globe made by the writer in the expression of 
his ravenous and insatiate greed to devour in the 
raw and digest as much of the earth and as many 
of its involvings as possible and make them his own, a 
part of himself, organic, human — a thing of thought ; 
that, haply, the phenomena of his ever-changing envi- 
ronment might become so many fancies ; the facts of 
fire and water, earth and air around him, so many fac- 
tors of fiction; the real, the ideal; form, formula; 
thing, thought ; the world, a word. In the first of these 
foraging expeditions, made in the years 1880 and 1881, 
the writer, traveling in general from west to east in the 
northern hemisphere, visited the folloAving countries, or 
parts of the earth, in the order named — his appetite 
increasing with that which it fed upon, and his hunger 
becoming the more inappeasable with the indigested ac- 
cumulations in his maw : Ireland, Scotland, England , 
France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy, 
Switzerland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Russia, 
Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Eng- 
land, Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, Greece, 
Asia Minor, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, India, the 
Malay Peninsula, the East Indian Archipelago, China, 
Japan, Chosen or Corea, Japan, and the United States 
from sea to sea. In the second, made in the years 1884 



VI PREFACE AND ADVERTISEMENT. 

and 1885, traveling in general from east to west and 
mainly in the southern hemisphere, he visited Cuba. 
Yucatan, Mexico, several of the West Indian Islands. 
Northern or Amazonian Brazil, Eastern Peru, Southern 
Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine Republic, Patagonia, 
Tierra del Fuego, Chili, Western Peru, Mexico, Califor- 
nia, the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, New South 
Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Egypt, England, and 
France. A summary of the traveler's most noteworthy 
accidents and adventures is given in a series of anti- 
thetic lines in the poem entitled At Gettysburg ; and 
a portraiture of himself at the end of his travels, as he 
conceived himself to be in the exercise of his art, ( re- 
membering the while the limitations of the happy dic- 
ta of Cicero and Heine respective^, that the eye may 
see many things, but never itself, and the bird may fly 
high, but never above itself, ) is given in the opening 
lines of Australia : A Charcoal Sketch. 

The jDoems, comprised in the second collection of 
this volume, are conceived to be — 

Like Fern-leaves Found in Shale, outlining life 
Against a world turned into sunless stone, 

and so are entitled. They are a product mainly of the 
years 1877, 1878, and 1879, during which, as well as a 
preceding lustrum, the writer was an enthusiastic la- 
borer in the lampless past of America, digging and 
delving in the vast kjokkenmoddings of the prehistoric 
ages, decyphering the hieroglyphics of the glaciers, and 
following the footprints of his predecessors back to 
their primal appearance in the sands of time ; till ev- 
ery potshard became a burning wick illuminating a 
long-vanished household of labor and love, every score, 
a scar of suffering and sacrifice, and the earth itself 
the unbosomed heart of l)uried humanity. The series 
passes from the palseontologic to the archajologic or 
prehistoric, and thence to the historic. None has been 
in type before, except the first. The Atlantosaurus, in 
Ward's Natural Science Bulletin, 1 Jan., 1884. 



PREFACE AND ADVERflSEMENT. VIH 

The third collection, Sage, Rue, and Thyme, is an 
olla podrida, containing poems written betimes durinsi; 
the past quarter of a century and exhibiting a corres- 
ponding evolution — growth or decay, as the case may 
be — in the writer. Assuming the development has 
been from the local and contracted to the cosmopolitan 
and comprehensive, the reader may find an interest in 
the relations of these poems to one another and their 
author to compensate for what they lack in themselves. 
Assuming, also, the development has been from igno- 
rance to knowledge, and from error to truth, the stu- 
dent of sex-symbolism may profit by the variations 
in the signification of the forms of prayer to be found 
in The Two Towers, written in 1871, Chautauqua, in 
1875, [ Atlantis, in 1878, ] and The Meaning of the 
Monument, in 1887. 

In conclusion, a paragraph or two with respect to 
the explanatory notes which either are prefixed of 
suffixed to several of the poems in these volumes. 

When, presumably, the subject-matter of a poem 
is known to the reader, and the factors of the fiction 
are fanailiar, the poem should be its own interpreter in 
every respect; but when the subject is strange, its in- 
volvings many and complicated, and an understanding 
thereof a mental growth requiring research and reflec- 
tion, the poem cannot be self-intelligible within reason- 
able bounds, and explanatory notes are indispensable 
and admissible perhaps to the point of being burden- 
some. 

Like the rainbow that comes into being and beauty 
only as a relation between a sunlit shower and the eye 
of an observer, so the poetic comes into existence only 
as a relation between a theme and a poet, or a printed 
page and a reader. Without the prosaic facts, phe- 
nomena, and experiences of the writer, the reader can- 
not stand in his stead and become the possessor of his 
fancies — without the factors of the fiction, the page 



Vlll PREFACE AND ADVERTISEMENT. 

before him is a blank. There is no royal road around 
the world and into the head and heart of humanity to 
the reader any more than there is to the traveler and 
writer. 

Go where the trav'ler will, by land or sea, 
The world is void of all that thrills the heart, 
Or fills the fancy with delightful visions, 
Unless he, like another Atlas, hears 
A world of comprehension on his shoulders. 

The eye sees only what it brings with it 

The power to see, the wise Carlyle hath said : 

A simple saw of universal scope. — Algeria, p. 42. 

It follows, hence, that, all men differing from one 
another in their powers of observation, one man may 
see more of the poetic in a theme than another, and 
one reader, more in a poem than another. Indeed, it 
is possible that a reader may see more in a poem than 
the maker of it. Aye, further, this is not only possible, 
but it is highly probable that a zoologist of Owen's 
comprehensiveness, in reading Australia : A Charcoal 
Sketch, will entertain a thousand thoughts and theories 
that never entered the head of its' author, and rate the 
poem the ratherfrom its subjective effect. than as an ob- 
jective cause. So, to a geologist of Martin's encom- 
passing. The Terraces of Eotomahana and The Hell 
OF Halemaumau have a scope and significance far be- 
yond the ken of the traveler who fashioned the com- 
plicated phenomena of these world's wonders into his 
fictions. So, to a critic of Zimmerman's refifnedi sensi- 
bility and boundless sympathy. The Land of Auld 
Lang Syne, Die Deutschep's Faderland, and Old 
Ireland — God Bless Her ! may contain a tenderness 
to which their author is a trilobite. To all which, the 
Germg,n proverb is a fitting colophon — 

@^ fterft nidEit im Spiegel, voa^ man int. ©piegel fiei^t., 

Frank Cowan, 
Greenesburgh, Penn'a. 



CONTENTS. 



THE BIMK OF A RAMBLER TWICE AROUND 
THE WORLD. 



Vale, Valhalla ! . . . . . . xvi 

A Finland Fantasy, . . . . . .17 

The Land of Auld Lang Syne, ... 20 

The Cognizance of Eueope, . . . . 21 

The City of the Royal Palm, ( Rio de Janeiro, ) 22 

William Cullen Bryant, 24 

A ,DuTCH Fog-signal, 25 

The Nibelungenlied, ...... 29 

The Baltic, 30 

Italy, 30 

A Drinking-bout in Denmark, ... 31 

The Irish Channel, 34 

Norway, 35 

Scotland, 40 

Finland, ........ 40 

Belgium — The Garden of Europe, ... 40 

Woman, Wine, and Song, . . ' . . 41 

Algeria, 42 

The French in Africa, 47 

B 



CONTENTS. 



England, . . . . 


. . 48 


Switzerland, ... 


49 


Object and Idea, .... 


. 49 


Hero and Leander, 


50 


On the Alps, 


. 52 


Amsterdam, ..... 


53 


A Reverie in Romk, .... 


. 54 


My Castle in Spain, 


56 


In Holland, . . 


. 58 


Ix London, ..... 


59 


The Tierra-del-Fuegian, . . . 


. . 60 


Old Ireland — God Bless Her ! 


63 


Mont Blanc, 


. 64 


The Earth, 


65 


PSAPPHA, . . . . 


. . 66 


Die Deutscher's Faderland, . 


68 


The Sea, .... 


. 69 


CoREA, OR Chosen, .... 


70 


CoREA, — In Brief, . . . 


. 7X 


-On Getting Drunk — In Parenthesis, 


73 


'Exclusive Chosen, .... 


. 75 


The Funghwang, the Dragon, and the 


Feng-Shui, 75 


The Mediterranean, 


. 81 


La Belle France, .... 


82 


The Plain op Troy, .... 


. 83 


Valhalla, ..... 


85 


The Crystal Palace op the Czar, 


. 89 


The Title op the Czar, , 


90 


A Captive in Sweden, 


. . 91 


The Alhamra, .... 


93 


The German Empire, .... 


. 93 


In the Catacombs of Palermo, 


94 


The Crusades in Song, 


. 99 


The Camel Driver at Carthage, . 


105 


John Chinaman, .... 


. 107 


In Norway, 


110 


London, 


. 110 


The Cannibal Islands, . 


111 



contents. xi 

Greece, 113 

Vandal and Andalusia, . . . . . 113 
A Princess of the Orient, . . . ■ .114 

The Eastern Hemisphere, . . . * . 116 

...^^he Wandering Jew, 117 

The German, 11^ 

The Riddle of the Sphinx, .... 119 

Military Germany, 120 

Down the Andes in a Hand-car, . . . 121 

Humor in Holland, 132 

The World, .133 

At Waterloo, 134 

China, 135 

The Hun, . 135 

The Goth and the Hun, 136 

In the City of Mexico, 137 

Camoens, ........ 139 

At Ilium, 140 

At Cyprus, 140 

On the Pacific, 141 

Japan and the Japanese, 143 

Tunisia, 144 

Fujiyama, 145 

At Rhodes, 146 

Portugal, 146 

•-^What is Poesy ? 147 

Athens, 147 

In a Silver Shaft of Nevada, . . . 148 

Mount ^tna, 149 

Coal in Situ, ,149 

The Tides, . 150 

Sea Sickness, 150 

The Sea, ' ... 150 

The Golden Chersonesus, .... 151 

BoujiE, 154 

Philippeville, 154 

Home on the Himalayas, 155 

Carthage, 157 



Xil CONTENTS. 

The Swedes, : 157 

Off the Coast of Abyssinia, . . . . 157 

The Porpoise, or Dolphin, 158 

The Sphinx, 158 

The Ice-b rg, 158 

The Flying-fish, 158 

Arabia, 158 

The Taj Mahal, 159 

Heliopolis, 166 

-^HE Red Sea, 166 

-^ivan ivanovitch, 166 

The Clepsydra, 166 

A Storm at Sea, . 167 

Asia, . 175 

The Suez Canal, . . . . . . .175 

The Hell of Halemaumau, .... 176 

The 180 th Degree of Longitude, . . . 190 

• The Ship's Lanterns, . . . . . 190 

The Terraces op Rotomahana, . . . .191 

Australia: A Charcoal-Sketch, . . . 221 

At Beirut, 260 

The German War-god, 260 

New Jersey, 260 

The Column and the Arch, .... 260 

In Nagasaki, 260 

The Brave, Old Burg of Greene, . . . 261 

At Gettysburg, 270 



LIKE FERN-LEAVES FOUND IN SHALE. 



The Atlantosaurus, 277 

The Glacial Epoch, 279 

The Savage Mother and the Cave Bear, . 282 

Atlantis, 286 

Plot and Counterplot in the Pala.ce of Palenque, 292 



CONTENTS. Xlll 



Freydisa, 307 

The Witch Tragedy of Salem, . . . 322 



SAGE, RUE, AND THYME. 



The Legend of the Weeping Willow, . .331 

The Love-lorn Lady's Lament, . . . 336 

The Rebuke of the Sage, 337 

The Two Towers, 338 

The Jewels I Prize, 352 

Maid of Mahoning, 353 

The Demon Lover, 354 

Love's Holy Grace, 356 

r^HB Witch op Westmoreland, .... 357 

Oh, I Would Love You Alway, . . . 359 

A Letter to a Lady, 360 

The Voice of the Anvil, .... 362 

Fate, 363 

An Epigram, . 364 

A Poet, 364 

A Toast to Woman, 364 

A Reason in Rhyme, 364 

Despair, 364 

Her Character, 365 

Indecision, 365 

To 365 

To A Silkworm, 366 

To 366 

Love's Rule of Three, 366 

The Eye and the Imagination, . . . .367 

Katy-did, 367 

Astronomical, . . ... . .367 

A Fourth of July Alternative, . . . 367 

The Heart Entombed, 368 

On Kissing, 368 



XIV CONTENTS. 

A Lover's Lament, 368 

On a Ringing Bell, 369 

A Lover's Prayep, 369 

Loving and Longing, 369 

On an Engagement Ring, ..... 370 

Literary Hermit Crabs, .... 370 

A Simile, . 370 

Graveyard Grotesques, 371 

The Last Kiss of Love, 372 

To You, Man, 373 

Jam Satis, . 373 

Once, and Once Only, 374 

Niagara, 375 

Chautauqua, 376 

The Fiddler of Time, 390 

The Last Man, 397 

The Meaning of the Monument, . . . 401 



THE RIME OF A RAMBLER TWICE 
AROUND THE WORLD, 



And therein of the strange, the wonderful, 
And the sublime of every sea and land, 
It was my good or evil hap to make 
A part of my existence evermore : 
A myriad of match-like memories, 
Betimes to kindle feelings of delight. 
Inflame the passions of my bosom, and 
IUum£ the mystic midnight of my mind. 
Now, with weird shimmering auroral dreams, 
Anon, withflmhing incandescent thoughts — 
The lightning-scissored silhouettes of God 
Within the storm-rack of the intellect. — 

At Gettysburg, p, 270, 



VALE, VALHALLA! 



It is the dawning of a day of June — 
The twentieth — the rounding of the Summer 
Into perfection ; as the turning of 
A score of years fills the organic measure 
Of maidenhood, and, on the earth, is seen 
The ultimatum of existence in 
A red-lipped, round'-limb,ed, mpther-musing wo- 
man; 
Her grey eyes glancing with departing fancies, 
And gleaming with the facts forthcoming in 
The future, e'en as now the eastern sky 
Is spangled with the waning stars of night, 
And radiant with the flashing beams of day ; 
Her white neck flushed with crimson, as 
The floating cloud above the dim horizon ; 
And the world of humanities asleep 
Beneath the fair folds of her bosom, as 
The village in the vale, and all that it 
Contains of vice and virtue, slumbering, 
Beneath the soft white blanket of the fog, — 
I look upon, ere my departure, from 
My gabled homestead on the height, ( yclept, 
When heaven was nearer earth than now, ) 
Valhalla. 



THE RIME OF A RAMBLER TWICE 
AROUND THE WORLD. 



A FINLAND FANTASY. 



When the world glows in the sunshine, 

And all things appear objective, 

Having size, and shape, and color. 

Sight to man is all-sufficient. 

But when darkness dims the object, 
And the eyes of man are useless, 
Lo ! within the mystic mirror 
Of organic cerebration, 

Reappears the world of sunshine 

Shimm'ring in uncertain semblance, — 

Till, evolving shape and likeness, 

Forming the Imagination. 
• C 



18 A FINLAND FANTASY. 

When the various vocations, 

In the struggle for existence, 

Scatter mankind in the sunshine, 

Silence reigns among the severed. 

But at eve, when men and women 
Gather in the family circle, — 
Hark ! the tongue hath found a function, 
And imagination language ! 

Then it is the father, mother. 

Sister, brother, and the stranger, 

Tell their haps to one another, 

And the Story is invented. 

When the summer and the sunshine 

Have departed from the heavens. 

And the winter and the darkness 

Have enclosed the world within doors ; 
When the oft-repeated story 
Falls unheeded into dull ears. 
And the sound of words outspoken 
Sinks into a senseless humming ; 

Then it is the story-teller, 

Gifted with a voice melodious, 

Sings an old tale in a new tone. 

And invents the art of Music. 

Then it is the feigning fancy 

Is evolved to the creative. 

In the rapt ecstatic vision 

Of the soul-impassioned singer ; 

Then it is the household story 

Is extended and expanded 

Into strange and unknown regions — 

Into past and future being ; 

Then it is the words are sounded 

With recurrent intonation — 

With a musical commingling, 

And the Poet is created ! 



A FINLAND FANTASY. 19 

Happy Finland, in the far north, 
Where the winter and the darkness, 
Sinking and suspending eyesight, 
Nurture the imagination ; 

Where the callings of the people, 

Scatt'ring them o'er land and ocean, 

Multiply the story-tellers 

When they gather in the homesteads ; 
Where, in many a hall. and hovel, 
Hark ! the wire-strung liarp^ resounding 
In accord with sweetest voices 
Molding Finland into music ! 



Happy, happy Suomema ! ^ 

Ringing with the harp and voices 

Of a thousand Runolainen ^ - 

Singing o'er the Kalevala — 

Singing o'er the people's love-songs, 
Singing o'er the people's hate-songs. 
Singing o'er the people's war-songs, 
Singing o'er the people's peace-songs, — 

Singing o'er the wondrous medley 

Wrought by Finland's peasant poets — 

Gathered in a nation's epic, — 

Gathered in the Kalevala ! * 



' The favorite musical instrument of the Finns, the Cante- 
le, is a kind of harp with five wire strings. 

^ Suomema, the Finnish name of Finland, signifying, Ke- 
ion of Lakes. 

^ Eunolainen, song-men, minstrels. 

* The Kalevala was compiled and published in Helsingfors 
in 1835, by Elias Lonnrot, then a practicing physician, after- 
ward professor of Finnish literature in the University of Hel- 
singfors. 



20 THE LAND OF AULD LANG SYNE. 



THE LAND OF AULD LANG SYNE.' 



Loquitur — An old Scotch soldier, at Darjiling, a Sanita- 
riutn on one of the Indian foot-hills of the Himalayas. 



Gude faith, my lads, I wadna gie a bawbee for a sang 
That wadna tak' me ower the sea, whaur I may niver 

gang, 
And gie me back the bluid o' youth, the heart, and 

hopefu' min'. 
Amid the wild enchantments o' the Land of Auld Lang 

Syne ! 

When a' the warl before me lay a straight and open 

road. 
And I could rin and trip and dance, beneath a stark 

mon's load ; 
Fame's jeweled cross — the dewy cress was brighter i' 

the ditch, 
And wi' a haggis i' the pat, I was aboon the rich ! 

When light o' foot and lang o' limb, amang the moun- 
tain rocks, 

I boundit wi' the antlered stag, and skelpit ,wi' the fox ;' 

Or, perched upon Ben Lomond's height, I liltit lang 
and loud, 

To cheer the upward soarin' lark, beneath me i' the 
cloud ! 

When Strang o' heart and fu' o' faith, wi' Jeanie by 

my side 
I warkit frae the dawn till dusk, wi' pleasure and wi' 

pride ; 
I was a king and she a queen, aboon our happy hearth, 
Until — the Lord forgie my tears ! — Heaven went wi' 

her frae earth ! 



THE COGNIZANCE OF EUROPE. 21 

Hout, mon ! this welt across my brow — it is a sabre 

scar; 
And this sma' stump — I tint my leg i' the Crimean 

war ; 
But thae were wounds o' little weight that couldna 

sink within ; 
The sairest cuts and stabs are thae that niver break the 

skin ! . 

Noo, gie me, lads, a cantie sang o' Scotland's rugged 

charms, 
And let me close my bluidshot een, and sink in Jeanie's 

arms ; 
And what I hae o' this warl's gear that I can title 

mine, 
I'll share wi' ye as brithers i' the Land of Auld Lang 

Svne ! 



^ Eecited on the anniversary of the birth of Eobert Burns, 
at a commemorative festival in Pittsburgh, in 1884, and print- 
ed first the following morning in the Pittsburgh Dispatch,' and 
other journals. 



THE COGNIZANCE OF EUROPE. 



The fairest of the women of the world 
Should be the type and cognizance of Europe — 
The only woman in the wide, wide world, 
Compounded of the precious gems and metals : 
Her skin, the white and lustrous pearl incarnate ; 
Her eyes, two sapphires in a living casket ; 
Her hair, the finest, fairest gold e'er, spun ; 
Her heart, a thrilling, throbbing koh-in-oor ! 



22 THE CITY OP THE ROYAL PALM. 

THE CITY OF THE ROYAL PALM} 
( RIO^DE J A NEIR 0. ) 



Canst fashion and then fix within thy mind 

That thought of midnight in the form of fish 

Evolved within the subterranean stream 

Which never ray of light impinged, save that 

Of the explorer's wick, revealing to 

His wond'ring gaze, the sightless, eyeless thing ? 

Thou canst. Then close thine eyes, and, for the nonce, 

Be to the sun-lit world as blind and blank ; 

That in the soul-lit world thou may'st discern 

With keenest vision, and, as I descant. 

Survey the City of the Royal Palm. 



Behold an overarching sky, as blue 
And clear and bright, as ever woman's eye 
Appear'd to bending lover, prying through 
The lace and lattice of a long-curv'd lash. 

Behold, beneath this overarching sky, 
A chaos of granitic mountains — cragg'd. 
Storm-stained and weather-worn, fantastic, — like 
An ocean-billow of enormous size. 
Uprising o'er a reef, fix'd in mid-sky. 

Amid this chaos of granitic mounts, 

An ocean-inlet, scallop 'd with a score 

Of bays, and studded with a hundred isles ; 

An inlet so serene, that mirroring 

The sky above, it seems to be in prayer — 

The ocean in communion with high heaven. 

Upon the shore of this communing sea, 
An aggregation of the art of man. 



THE CITY OP THE ROYAL PALM. 23 

Yclept a city, finite as a whole, 

But infinite in its dissevered parts ; 

A city spreading far, and fair as far, 

O'er hill and dale and mountain gulch and crag, 

And housing half a million of mankind ; 

A city, in the belt of Capricorn 

Around the world, the golden, jewel'd clasp. ' 

Above the city's aggregated'art, 

Alone, in pairs, in groves, and endless rows, 

A peerless palm in grandeur and in grace. 

Uplifting, in its overarching fronds, 

A royal crown, of God's own handiwork. 

Unto itself and all that it o'ershadows 

The city spreading far, and fair as far. 
Upon the shore of the communing sea. 
Amid the chaos of granitic mounts. 
Beneath the sky of love-lit blue-eyed glances, 
The City of the Royal Palm ! 



Now, ope 
Thine eyes; and when thou hearest merchants prate 
Of Rio as a mart — a city in 
A coffee-sack, — thou wilt review in prose 
The self-same city thou hast seen in song. 



^ Printed first in the Revue Commerciale, Finandire et Mari- 
time,^ Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 4th September, 1884 ; afterward as 
the initial poem in a small volume, entitled "The City op the 
EoYAL Palm, and Other Poems," published in Rio de Janeiro, 
and dedicated to the Emperor, Dom Pedko II. 

^ The Royal Palm, ( Oreodoxia regia, ) is first among the pal- 
macese, in size, symmetry, and stateliness. It attains the 
perfection of its development in the celebrated Botanical Gar- 
dens of Rio de Janeiro. Here, planted in rows on each side of 
the principal avenues, the ?reat symmetric files constitute one 
of the vegetable glories of the globe. 



24 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 



A meagre man of flesh and blood ; 
And yet,. God wot, the while he stood, 
In pensive and poetic mood, 

With age bowed down, 
His head o'ertopped St. Patrick's Rood, 

Above the town. 

Aye, rose to such a wondrous height, 
That in the day or in the night. 
He looked in the eternal light 

Above the clouds, 
And saw wdth the supernal sight 

Ascribed to gods. 

Now;giancing at the 'meadow star, 
Anon, the globe that gleams afar. 
Till, borne from the particular 

Unto the whole. 
He saw and sang how all things are 

In subtile soul. 

Good faith, his white-haired, wrinkled pate. 
In phrenologic size and weight. 
Was barely half again as great 

As mustard-pot, 
Yet well did it accommodate 

A world of thought ! 

Whate'er, in fine and fact, the man, 

As undertakers mortals span, 

He was, as bards their forebears scan, 

A mental giant, 
And worthily cleped among his clan, 

The Mighty Bryant ! 



A DUTCH FOG-SIGNAL. ' 25 

I marvel, hence, New Yorkers fall 

Before the Golden Calf of Wall, 

The Brooklyn Bridge, the Gift of Gaul, 

The Ob(Jisk, 
The Giver of the Grandest Ball, 

The Bust of Fiske — 

And never raise their heads to view 

Above all these, within the blue 

Of all that's good and all that's true. 

And death-defiant. 
The hoary head of one they knew — 

The Mighty Bryant ! 



A DUTCH FOG-SIGNAL. 



It is an old Dutch skipper, 

About as broad as long, 
Sits in his cosy cabin. 

And sings his sailor's song. 
And smokes his monstrous meerschaum, 

And drinks his can of grog. 
Without a thought of danger 

In the increasing fog. 

The while, the skipper's grandson, 

About as long as broad. 
Sits at the oaken table 

And fills himself with cod ; 
Until he can't distinguish 

In the increasing gloom 
A solitary object 

Within the little room. 
D 



26 A DUTCH FOG-SIGNAL. 

Then up and speaks the grandson, 

To questioning inclin'd, — 
The yery world a wherefore 

To his enquiring mind,-^- 
" Please tell me, Grandpa Skipper, 

How you can drink your grog 
In absolute indiff 'rence 

To danger in this fog ? 



" We are among a thousand 

Ships, brigantines, and barks. 
Sloops, schooners, yacts, and steamers, 

Brigs, frigates, smacks, and arks, — 
And yet you sit here smoking, 

When every mariner 
Should be upon the look-out — 

Especially Mein Herr ! " 



Then up and speaks the skipper — 

" Come, sit upon my knee, 
And I will tell you plainly 

The truth as it may be. 
How I can smoke my meerschaum. 

And drink my can of grog. 
In 'spite of all the dangers 

Of collision in a fosr. 



" Once, on a time, a wise man 

Discovered, with surprise. 
That, like a raw potato, 

A skipper may have eyes ; 
And, forthwith, he invented. 

With colors red and green, 
A special code of signals 

That might, perhaps, be seen ! 



A DUTCH FOG-SIGNAL. 27 

" But alas ! for his invention, 

Based oil the sense of sight, 
A fog was found to darken 

The brightest kind of Hght ; 
And many gallant vessels 

Went down into the deep, 
Because, with their own e3'elid^. 

The eyes are closed in sleep ! 



" 'Twas then another wise rnan 

Discovered, it appears. 
That, like ail Indian corn-stalk; 

A skipper may have ears ; 
And, forthwith , he invented — 

As it to him occurred — 
Another code of signals 

That might, perhaps, be heard ! 



" But alas ! for his invention. 

Based on the sense of sound. 
Collisions still Avere frequent. 

And may men were drowned ; 
The breakers bombed and bellowed 

Above the loudest bells. 
And how the fog-horns fizzled, 

The City of Brussels tells ! 



"At last, a wondrous wise man 

Discovered, in a dose. 
That, like a blacksmith's bellows, 

A skipper has a nose ; 
And, forthwith, he invented — 

And since, secure has felt — 
A special code of signals 

That always can be gmelt! 



28 A DUTCH FOG-SIGNAL. 

" Upon the vessel's mast-head, 

Exposed to every breeze, 
He lashed with a good rope-yarn 

An old Limburger cheese ! 
And though, as thick as smearcase, 

The gathering fogs were blown, 
The vessel by its savor 

For twenty leagues was known ! 



" And never, from that moment, 

A ship, the signal owns. 
Has met with a collision 

And gone to Davy Jones ; 
For though both ears be plugged up, 

And- both eyes closed in sleep, 
The nose is always open 

To odors on the deep ! " 



" Who was the wondrous wise man 

This signal did devise ? " 
Th' interrogating grandson 

Enquires, with mouth and eyes ; 
" He is the good old skipper, 

Upon the stormy sea. 
Commands the Flying Dutchman, 

With his grandson on his knee ! 



" Now, climb into thy hammock. 

Thou apple of my eye, 
And drift away to dreamland. 

While I am sitting by ; 
And fear not, while thou'rt sleeping. 

And I am drinking grog, 
The cheese upon the mast-head 

Will save us in the fog ! " 



THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 29 



THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 



Hast read it ? — Well, it seems to me, that, be it thing 

or thought, 
Evolved into existence, or, in homely phrase, begot, 
There is an age to one and all, within a wondrous 

womb, 
In which a thousand monstrous shapes and shadows 

they assume. 

Thus, in the womb of time and space, before the bliss- 
ful birth 

Of the big, round, and dimpled babe, the planetary 
earth. 

What meteoric maelstroms in the ether-ocean swirled ! 

What comets came and went in flame ! what monsters 
filled the world ! 

Thus, in the womb of bird and beast, ere the organic 
worm 

Through an infinity of shapes assumed the human 
form. 

What whale-like lizards in the sea ! what dragons in 
the air ! 

What crocodiles upon the land ! what monsters every- 
where ! 

Thus, in the womb of fantasy, before the happy 

thought 
Into the formal figure or similitude is wrought, 
What monstrous and fantastic shapes into our vision 



creep 



What nightmares come and go betimes within our trou- 
bled sleep ! 



30 ITALY. 

So, in the womb of German song, ere Goethe could 
create 

The forms of Faust and Marguerite and forge their 
fearful fate. 

The monstrous and misshapen must the beautiful pre- 
cede 

In the poetic nightmares of the Nibelungenlied. 



THE BALTIC. 



The civilizer of the north of Europe ; 

The avenue of interchange and commerce; 

The impetus to daring enterprise ; 

The motive to adventure and the means; 

The circumstance that made mild men bold sailors, 

And, in the course of time, made sailors sov'reigns ! 



ITALY. 



The Land of Beauty — color, form, proportion 

In fire and water, earth and air, combined : 

The brightest, bluest skies ; the fairest vales ; 

The loveliest of seas and waterfalls ; 

And mountains ranging from the peak of ice 

Through every form unto the dome of fire ! 

And as in Nature so in Art: A Land 

Of Beauty, the most rare and rapturous. 

In architecture, sculpture, painting, and 

The art of arts that weaves the wand'ring wind 

Into the filmiest of fictile fabrics, 

Ancl yet the most enduring of man's works, — 

The airy, soul-wrought art of Poesy ! 



A DRINKING-BOUT IN DENMARK. 31 



A DRINKING-BOUT IN DENMARK. 



Among the rare and interesting works of art and curiosi- 
ties preserved in the Rosenborg Palace, at Copenhagen, the 
late Professor Carl Andersen, in an English translation of his 
Catalogue of "The Chronological Collection of the Kings of 
Denmark," refers to the glass goblet, which suggested the fol- 
lowing ballad, in the following woi'ds : — "A veiy large glass 
goblet, (15 inches in height and 5 inches in diamet-er,) from 
which Frederik II., once, in the year 1568, drank with many 
princes and noblemen, to see who could drink the most, of 
which the names and marks of the king and his fellow-cham- 
pions, scratched upon the glass, are a witness." — p. 12. 

Of other drinking-cups in the collection, Mr. Andersen 
further remarks : — " Three goblets, of which the glass one with 
silver cover, on which the monogram of Christian IV. is en- 
graved, was used, according to tradition, as his favorite drink- 
ing-vessel. Upon its sides the arms of the Danish provinces 
are cut. On the other two, which are silver ( one gilded ), the 
king's monogram appears ; the ungilt silver one bears also an 
inscription denoting that the cup was made from money, 
which, in the year 1600, the king had won from four courtiers 
in a mutual bet, which of them first should become intoxica- 
ted between the 6th of February and Easter in the preceding 
year." — p. 19. 

" A champagne glass 20 inches high with the following 
verse engraved upon it : 

" ' Wer mit Bacchus kompt ins Spiel, 
Sell sich fiir und trau nicht viel, 
Nimpt er dir dein Kopff nur ein, 
So seind die Fiisze nimmer dein.' " — p. 57. 



It was the merry tide of Yule, 

A thousand years ago, 
Where the Baltic roars on Danish shores 

When the winds of winter blow. 

The^^^ing, among a score of lords 
Of high, and low degree, 

Sate at the board with wine well stored, 
In mirth and revelry. 



32 A DRINKING-BOUT IN DENMARK. 

Aha ! oho ! in the world without, 

The midnight sky may scowl, 

And the blustering blasts from Norwegian wastes 
Like a thousand wolves may howl ! 

In the world within the castle's walls, 

A fire glows on the hearth, 
And nothing is heard but the joyous word. 

And the song and laughter of mirth ! 

And oho ! aha ! in the world without, 
The drifting snow may chill. 

And the ice may cut into many a hut 

With a sword's keen edge and kill ! 

In the world within the castle's walls. 
The warm wine gladly glows ; 

And, to many a toast and braggart boast, 
The warm wine freely flows. 

Until upspake the heated king, 

" Go, fetch me the giant's bowl — 

The Venetian vase of the clearest glass, 
The daring viking stole. 

" And he, about this Yule-tide board. 

That, at a single draught, 
The least can show in the bottom below, 

When thus he shall have quaffed — 

" He shall be king of the Danes to-night. 

And sit at the table-head, 
And wear a closed crown^ till he topple down 

Among the drunken dead ! " 

The bowl was brought ; and as each lord drank. 
With the diamond set in his ring. 

The king, as the clerk, made a well-known mark, 
Signifying, Attest, the King. 



A DRINKING-BOUT IN DENMARK. 33 

And, as with varying results, 

The bowl was filled and drained, 

And scratched by the king with his diamond ring, 
The contest in spirit gained. 

Until, at length, a grizzled lord 

Of monstrous make and mien, 

Reduced the score an inch or more 
Below the lowest seen ! 

And with a sudden burst of cheers 

That made the castle ring. 
The lords, one and all. in the reeling hall. 

Began to hail him king ! 

But hold — there sate at the king's right hand, 

A lord as long and lank. 
As if he had grown in skin and bone 

Into an enormous shank. 

The lank lord took the bowl in his hands. 

And drank until, behold ! 
He can lay it down and take up the crown, 

As the king himself hath told ! 

Nay, not too fast — the king himself 

Has yet to leave his score 
On the diamond-cut vase of the clearest glass, 

Ere the drinking-bout be o'er ! 

At last, the king took up the cup. 

Filled sparkling to the brim. 
That all might see no favor should be 

Accorded unto him. 

And, holding it firmly to his lips, , 

He drank until the vase. 
Turning up as he quaffed an enormous draught, 

Stood empty on his face ! 
E 



;84 THE IRISH CHANNEL. 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! long live the king ! 
Burst from the lips of all, 
• ,. As the empty vase on the royal face, . . 

Was revealed in the glowing hall ! 

Aye, aye, hurrah ! hip, hip, hurrah ! ' : 
Long live the king ! the king ! 

And now once more, until with the roar , 
The Danish realrn shall -ring ! 

But Christ ! behold ! the golden crown 
Has fallen from the king's head, 

And the empty vase on his upturned face, 
Is on the face of the dead ! 

. It was a thousand years ago, 

The merry tide of Yule, 
But alas ! the morrow was fraught with sorrow. 
And Denmark was in dool ! 



^ In Denmark, when the succession of the crown was lim- 
ited to a particular family, the fact was symbolized by draw- 
ing together the circle of points, and thereby closing an other- 
wise open crown, or one open to the competition of all. The 
event occurred in Danish history in 1660. 



THE IRISH CHANNEL. 



The ocean is whatever fancy wills : 
A lonely, love-lurn lady, the Atlantic, 
And this — the Irish Channel — a fair finger 
Of an extended hand selecting gems : 
Laying aside the Emerald of Erin 
As the most pleasing to her downcast eyes- 
A sacred souvenir, methinks, to give 
A surcease to her sorrow — in the sigh — 
The breath I feel upon my cheek, so close, 
I turn to clasp the lady in my arms ! 



NORWAY. 35- 

SCOTLAND. 



A crag of granite rising from the sea ; 
Upon this crag a human habitation — 
The home of Burns, the Poet of the Heart; 
Upon the roof-tree of this humble cottage, 
An airy perch above the earth, in cloudland — '■ 
In sight of castles, tents, and tournaments ; 
In sound of song and dance and minstrelsy ; 
In scent of steaming roasts of boar and ven'son ; 
In taste of wines of rich and rarest flavor ; 
In touch of heroes' hands and ladies' lips — 
The realm of Scott, the Wizard of the North ! 



BELGIUM— THE GARDEN , OF EUROPE. 



Manured as it has been with human blood 
For centuries, it is no marvel now 
Abundance is synonymous with Belgium. 



NORWAY. 



Norway ! where the tidal currents 

Rushing, in their alternation. 

Through an inter-islet channel, 

Form a fierce engulfing whirlpool : 

Sweeping Over sunken bowlders, 
Swirling in concentric circles. 
Seething, like a witch's cauldron, 
Foaming, like a maddened monster : 

Tossing ships, like emj)ty cockles, 

Whirling whales, in giddy waltzes, — 

In a roaring, raging passion. 

Overwhelming all within it. 



36 NORWAY. 

Aye, a mighty ocean-eddy, 

Which, in the imagination 

Of the terrified beholders, 

Has evolved into another — 

An imaginary Maelstrom 
Of the world of waters swirling 
In an all-involving vortex 
Of delirious destruction ! 

By the side of which the circles 

Of the classical Charybdis 

Are but rings of bubbles bursting 

In a summer-shrinking millpond ! 

Norway ! where the whale, uprising 

From the black depths of the ocean. 

Blows into the air the water 

Lying on its lidded nostril ; 

And the waterspout, appearing, — 
To the whaler, in his vessel 
Laden deep with bone and blubber, 
Looking o'er the troubled waters, — 

Like the lifting of the ocean 

From above the lidded nostril 

Of a greater whale than any 

Ever struck by daring seaman. 

Aye, a mighty whale-like monster. 

Which, in. the imagination 

Of the fireside story-tellers. 

Has evolved into the Kraken : 

Rising, like a huge volcano, 
From the billows of the ocean, 
And upheaving seas of M^ater 
From a mighty belching crater ! 

When compared with the low island 

Sindbad found to be a monster. 

Not alone in bulk the greater. 

But in grim and graphic grandeur ! ^ 






NORWAY. 37 

Norway ! where the mighty cuttle, 

Rising from the lace-like spind-drift, 

And, above the vessel's rigging. 

Rearing tentacles, like serpents : 

Frighting him upon the masthead, 
Driving from his wheel the helmsman, 
And, perhaps, with might resistless, 
Seizing an astounded sailor : 

Lifting him above the gunwale. 

Strangling him in its enfoldings, 

Sinking with him in the ocean, 

And devouring him in secret. 

Aye, a monster of the ocean, 
Which, in the imagination, 
Has commingled and united 
With the mighty Midgard Serpent : 

An ideal serpent-circle 

Winding round and round the whole world, 

Symholizing universal 

And eternal animation ! 
In the sight of which, the serpents 
Twining round the writhing bodies 
Of Laocoon and children. 
Are but pin-hooked squirming earthworms ! 

Norway ! where the great winged eagle, — 

Fearless with the pangs of hunger 

Gnawing in herself and eaglets, — 

Swooping down upon a lambkin, 

Fans the hot face of the shepherd, 
Battl'ing to protect the youngling, — 
Striking with the first-found weapon. 
Shouting till the wilds reecho ; 

Till the great bird, in her talons, 

Lifting o'er his head the lambkin, 

Bears it to her lofty eyrie 

To devour it with her children. 



38'. NORWAY. 

Aye, a great winged fanning eagle, 

Which, in the imagination 

Of the mythopoeic shepherds, 

Has evolved into Hrsesvelgur — 

Has evolved into the wind-god, 
In the guise of a great eagle, 
Sitting, on a mighty mountain. 
Far away in the wild northland : 

Swooping from his lofty eyrie. 

And, beneath his wide-spread pinions. 

As they sweep and flap and flutter, 

Fanning into life the tempests ! 

Norway ! where the wolf of winter, 

Gaunt and meagre as a spectre. 

Stealing from its rocky fastness, 

Ravages the frozen region : 

Running down the harnessed reindeer, 
Wearing out the shaggy horses, 
Slaughtering defenceless cattle. 
Butchering unguarded sheepfolds, — 

Yea, attacking men and women 

On the outskirts of the village, — 

A remorseless and resistless 
.Monster of untold destruction. 

Aye, a monster of destruction. 

Which, in the imagination 

Of the ever-watchful peasants, 

Has developed into Fenrir : 

Of all monstrous wolves, the largest, 
Of all largest wolves, the fiercest, 
Of all fiercest wolves, the fellest, 
Monster of untold destruction ! 

In the universal ruin. 

Prophesied by sage and singer. 

Lapping up the mighty ocean 

And devouring earth and heaven ! 



NORWAY. 39 

Norway ! wonderland of nature ! 

Where the earth and sky and ocean 

Form, in their incessant jarring, 

An environment of warfare : 

Reappearing in the mental 

Mirror of the rugged people, 

As a wild and wondrous region 

Filled with mighty forms and monstrous : 

Grim, primaeval winter giants. 

Grim, primseval summer war-gods, 

In an all-involving struggle 

For the boundless world's dominion ! 

Chief, among the monstrous giants, 
Ymir, the jjrimseval chaos. 
Slain in battle by the war-gods, 
And cut up to form the whole world : 

Of his flesh was made the mainland; 

Of his blood was made the ocean ; 

Of his bones were made the mountains ; 

Of his hair were made the forests ; 
Of his skull were made the heavens ; 
Of his brain, the clouds of vapor, — 
Fitting image of the vague thoughts 
Forming in a mind chaotic ! 

Chief among the mighty war-gods, 

Thor, the lightning and the thunder 

Of the animating summer. 

Warring with the hosts of winter : 

Wielding only a huge hammer. 

In his conflicts with the giants ! 

See it speeding through the storm-rack, 

Like a sun hurled through the heavens ! 

Hear it crashing through the brainbox 

Of a fierce opposing giant ! 

And the world reverberating 

With the heavy monster's falling! 



40 FEANCE. 

Of the cosmical conceptions 
Of the olden myth-creators, — 
Comprehending naught in nature, 
Till made concrete and objective, — 

This of Thor and his huge hammer 
Crashing through the skulls of giants 
In the lightning and the thunder. 
Is the grandest and sublimest ! 
Aye, of all the myth-creations 
Of mankind through untold ages, 
This, the grandest and sublimest, 
Thor, the Thunderer of Norway ! ' 



1 Commonly, the Kraken is regarded as an evolution of the 
Octopus. The object in nature, however, which is mirrored in 
the imagination as tliis ideal monster, is undoubtedly the 
whale supplemented by the waterspout, as set forth in the 
poem. 

^ In Norway, Thor was first among the gods ; in Sweden, 
Odin. 



FINLAND. 



Heigho ! the Finland of my fancy was 

An ermine cloak upon the shoulders of 

The shiv'ring, shudd'ring form of Northern Europe ; 

But this — it is a cape of dark green velvet. 

Bespangled with a myriad of gems — 

The little isles along the Baltic border. 



FRANCE. 



Rome's rival, France, as long as she includes 
The Melos Venus and Mont Blanc within" 
The confines of her kingdom and possession ; 
Two types of the sublime and beautiful 
Sufficient to redeem her from a world 
Of dissipation, wickedness, and vice. 



WOMAN, WINE, AND SONG. 41 



WOMAN, WINE, AND SONG. 



„ 9Ber nic^t ikbt 2Bein, 2Betl6, unb ©efang, 
S)er BteiBt ein ^Rarr fein £ebe=Iang." — 

Attributed to Martin Luther. 



Come, fill to the brim the crystal cup with ruddy 

sparkling wine ! 
And let it flow until I feel its soul infused in mine — 
Until, from the earthy of earth absolved, I live from 

my bod}^ apart, 
A spirit of Heaven enshrined within a happy, happy 

heart ! 



Come, sit thee down, thou beauteous lass, and drain 
the cup with me, 

And all that man may be to maid that will I be to 
thee; 

Come, come, thou supplemental self, without whom I 
am naught, 

But with whom I am all the world by man and wo- 
man wrought! 



And while we sit and sip, fair maid, in happy uni- 
son — 

In quivering throb and breathless thrill indissolubly 
one — 

In the expression of our souls, loud let our voices rise 

And mingle in melodious song, in the enraptured 
skies ! 

F 



42 ALGERIA. 

Then let thie snows of winter fall, and midnight tem- 
pests roar, 

And Wretchedness and Want in tears knock trembling 
at the door, 

I shall be blest, and pray to God the moments to pro- 
long — 

There is no woe within the world of woman, wine, and 
sons; ! 



ALGERIA. 



Go where the trav'ler will, by land or sea. 
The world is void of all that thrills the heart, 
And fills the fancy with delightful visions. 
Unless he, like another Atlas, bears 
A world of comprehension on his shoulders. 

The eye sees only what it brings with it 
The power to see, the wise Carlyle hath said: 
A simple saw of universal scope. 

So, stranger, ere thou sayest thou hast seen 
Naught in Argier,^ that, many a time and oft, 
Thou hast beheld elsewhere — as fair a land, 
As bright a sky, and Arabs just as brown. 
And negroes just as black, and Jews as rich, — 
Look once more from this ancient Moorish tower 
Upon the panorama of the Tell.^ 

Nay, shut thine eyes — the power they bring to see 
Is strongest when the lids are closed. Now^ look. 

Here, Masinissa lived and died of old, 

A century of war incorporate ! 

As Ney to Bonaparte, Sherman to Grant, 



ALGERIA. 43 

So he to Scipio in the o'erthrow 

Of Hannibal and the destruction of 

The rival of imperial Rome, dread Carthage ! 

In yonder cloud of dust, methinks, I see 

The warrior, at full four score and ten, 

Upon his fiery steed, heading the charge 

Of his renowned Numidian cavalry 

Like an organic thunderbolt against 

The cohorts of the Carthaginians ! 

And, in the sighing of the breeze, as well, 

I hear the sobbing exhalations of 

His four and fifty sons, about his bed, 

When he gave up the ghost, at ninety-seven ! 

A mighty man, nor dwarfed, when placed beside 

The giants Scipio and Hannibal ! 

Here, also, Genseric, the Vandal, came. 

As dread a scourge Avithin the Roman world 

As his great compeer, Attila, the Hun ! 

Aye, here, this Bismarck of the olden time 

From a chaotic world, amassed a might 

To move resistless o'er the Midland Sea 

x\nd sack the very citadel of Rome ! 

Then was the world turned topsy-turvy, when 

The white-skinned, blue-eyed, and red-bearded 

Norman 
Came from the sunny regions of the South — 
The land primajval of the sable Negro ! 
But though the earth hath many strange convul- 
sions, 
The strangest of them are among mankind, 
As witness the succession on this plain. 

Here, also, Belisarius, the great, 
The Glory of the Romans, came, to check 
The triumph of the Vandals and regain 
The world for the imperial Justinian ; 
And get, as his reward ( if not, in fact, 



44 ALGERIA. 

At least, in fiction, for all time, ) the chains 
Of slavery, the sightless orbs of crime, 
And an unheeded death in want and woe; 
His name henceforth, howe'er, a synonym 
Of the ingratitude of governments. 
Immortal prototype of Barneveldt, 
St. Clair, and many thousands more, accept, 
I pray thee, as an earnest of the heart 
That throbs for thee, this obolus of song ! 
The fame, thy ingrate master and the world 
Denied thee in the flesh, shall not be wanting 
As long as the great globe of history 
Revolves in time around the hub of Rome. 

Here, also, came Abdulla^ and his horde 

Of Arabs, like a whirlwind of the desert, 

Destroying everything within its path ; 

And scarcely had the visitation passed. 

When, like a countless swarm of locusts, came 

Another host of Arabs to possess 

The land and give it the impress of Asia. 

Until, among them, lo ! brave Tarik rose, 

And gathering around him on this plain 

An army of resistless might, set out. 

And crossed the straits* that bear his name to-day, 

And, sweeping o'er the beauteous land of Spain, 

Above the Cross of Christ, the Crescent of 

Muhammad reared, to gleam for centuries ! — 

Hast ever sighed within the halls of the 

Alhamra?^ Yea; know then that the great tide 

That cast that paper-nautilus upon 

The spur of the Sierras, for the world 

To wonder at for ages, gathered here. 

Within the scope of vision from this tower. 

Here, also, Barbarossa^ came, the first 
Of the long line of pirate kings, to make 
The mention of Argier throughout the world 



ALGEIillA. 46 

A shudder to the boldest Christian heart ! ; 

Oh, for the word, the comprehensive word, 

To compass in its airy metes and bounds 

The world of woe these walls have witnessed ! 

Hell ! — 
Nay, Hell is weak ; for in the suffering 
Of a damned soul, atoning for its sin. 
There is a sense of justice that absolves 
The comprehension from regarding it 
An ultimate of agony and woe. 
No other word, methinks, can half so well 
Express the suffering upon this soil 
As the accursed dissyllable Argier ! 
This bright blue sky o'erhead, oh, can it be 
It arched so like a sapphire cup, o'erturned 
By God above the rarest of his works. 
The while it echoed with the sighs and groans 
Of untold myriads of Christian slaves T 

Among the number, see the gifted man, 
Whom to have borne and bred, a continent 
May justly boast, Cervantes Saiivadra, 

The auther of Go, find the boy above 

The age of twelve that knows not Don Quix&te, 

And I will show you Sancho Panza's ass ! — 

What a resilient spirit to rebound 

From the abyss of untold misery 

Into the clouds, reechoing henceforth 

In thunder the explosions of his laughter ! 

And yet, methinks, without his trials here, 

In the heart-breaking rack of slavery, 

The world had never heard the joyful shout 

That burst from his expanding chest, a freeman ! 

And in another group of slaves, behold, 
The brave astronomer, who, to advance 
The knowledge of the stars among mankind. 
Feared not to put himself within the power 



46 ALGERIA. 

Of the accursed sea-rovers,- — Arago. 

Alas ! the fate of many a noble soul, 

Casting about to aid his fellow-man, 

His eyes fixed on the gleaming globes of heaven, 

And seeing not the pit-fall at his feet, 

And the impatient barb within to pierce 

His heart, as if he were a beast of prey. 

Here, also, in the circle of our vision. 

The Black Hawk of the Arabs, Abd-el-Kader, 

Commanded, in the majesty of man 

Involved within the purple of his blood. 

The admiration of a startled world ! 

A warrior, as fierce and terrible 

As ever caught the lightning in his grasp ' 

And hurled it hissing through a foeman's heart! 

A statesman, comprehensive, wise, and purei; 

A priest, ennobling in his holiness 

The stream of blood that coursed within his veins, 

Although it issued from the heart of him 

Whom untold millions symbolize within 

The silver segment of the sun-lit moon, 

Muhammad, the Apostle of the world 

That turns about the Black-Stone^ of the Kaaba ! 

wondrous panorama of Argier! 
Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, 
Arabians, and Turks, and now the French, 
Appearing as successive conquerors ; 
Strutting awhile in triumph o'er the ruins 
Of their enslaved or slaughtered predecessors, 
And then o'erthrown and butchered in their turn ! 
Well may the aspect of the populace. 
Compounding in its intermingling floods 
The blood of Europe, Africa, and Asia, 
Disport the mottled hues of Joseph's coat. 
And shift, in countless combinations, like 
The colored beads of a kaleidoscope : 



THE FRENCH IN AFRICA. 47 

I marvel at the masses and the men 
I see, in fact and fancy, from this tower. 



^ Argier, an archaic form of Algeria, used by Shalcespeare, 
The Tempest, i., 2, and otlier writers of iiis day. 

^ The Tell of Algeria is a strip of undulating cultivated 
land extending from the shore of tlie Mediterranean Sea to a 
distance varying from 50 to 100 miles inland. 

^ Abdulla ibn Saad, in tlie reign of the Khalif Othman, in 
the year 647 of our era. 

*The Straits of Gibraltar, i. e., Djehel-al-Tarik, signifying 
the Mount of Tarik. 

^ Alhamra, in Arabic Kal'-al-hamrah, the Red Castle, from 
the reddish color of the stones of which it is built. Common- 
ly but incorrectly written Alham&ra. 

^Barbarossa, a name among Europeans borne by two 
brothers, albeit properly a corruption of the Turkish name of 
the elder, Baba-Arudj. 

''In 1646, the number of white Chri?tian slaves held by 
the Algerines was estimated at 20,000. In 1768, 1500 were re- 
deemed by Spain alone ; and in 1816, when Lord Exmouth de- 
stroyed the last of the pirate ship=, about ;>000 were liberated. 
"These are some of the most striking instances ; but hundreds 
of captives were annually ransomed by their respective na- 
tions, or by societies foi-med for the purpose. Many priests 
nobly d3voted themselves to ministering to the flaves, even 
voluntarily going to the g.illej's for the sake of being with 
them. Several of these, who were killed among tlie other vic- 
tims of the Turks, have been canonized." — 11. L. Pi.ayfair. 

^Burton, one of the few Europeans who have seen the Ho- 
ly Stone of Islamism, is of the opinion that it is an aiJrolite. 



THE FRENCH IN AFRICA. 



If France be resurrected Rome, why not 

Dominion over Africa to-day ? 

And not alone in Mauritania, 

But far within the bowels of the Niger, 

And farther in out-lying Madagascar, — 

As Africa has grown somewhat since Caesar ? 



48 ■' ' ENGLAND. 



ENGLAND. 



England ! where the graphic Chaucer, in his panoramic 

page, , _ 

Fixed for aye the men and manners of his mediaeval 

age; 
As the ancient Grecian sculptor made a future time 

his own, 
When he cut the frieze and tablets of the peerless 

Parthenon ! 

England ! where the cosmic Shakespeare sate unseen 
in silent thought, 

Till, behold ! the English drama into shape and sub- 
stance wrought ; 

As the Lotus-god^ of India closed his eyes in reverie. 

And, behold ! the world created in his fertile fantasie ! 

England ! where the musing Milton, with the in-sight 
of the blind, 

Looked into the Court of Heaven from the midnight 
of his mind ; 

As the sailor, looking sk3^ward, with the keenest world- 
ly sight. 

Sees the stars in all their glory only in the darkest 
night ! 

England ! where the mighty Dryden, master of the 
English ode. 

With majestic mien and motion in the realm of letters 
strode ; 

As a noble Roman consul, from the Rhine in tri- 
umph come, 

Laden with a victor's trophies, walked within the walls 
of Rome ! 



OBJECT AND IDEA. 49 

England ! where impassioned Byron, with intensest 
love and hate, 

Wrought in rhyme his overwhelming, half-divine, half- 
demon fate ; 

Like a tropical tornado, whirling with resistless force, 

A sublime sight in the distance, an appalling in its 
course ! 

England ! where a thousand poets, gifted with a tuneful 

tongue, 
Of the outer world and inner in successive ranks have 

sung ; 
Thee, I hail ! with wild heart-beatings and ineffable 

delight. 
As a pilgrim to St. Peter's when its dome appears in" 

sight ! 



' One of the most gnblime of the theological concepts of 
the Hindus is that the world as it appears to ns an objective 
Thing is the subjective Thought of Brahma, sitting in eternal 
contemplation in silence and immovable in the corolla of the 
lotus, or Avater-lily, ( Niimpheea nelumbo,) the symbolic seat of 
the Creator for ages ^vherever the plant is known in Asia, and 
the necessity was realized of focusing the infinite in the finite 
before it becomes a conceivable entity and unity. 



SWITZERLAND. 



The eyrie of the continent of Europe — 
The eagle-nest of Law and Liberty ! — 
In fondled fiction, if not in firm fact. 



OBJECT AND IDEA. 



Next to the Sun and Sea and Sky, perhaps, 
The Mountain, in the mirror of the mind, 
Is wrought into the most sublime of thoughts. 
G 



50 HERO AND LEANDER, 



HERO AND LEANDER. 



When, in the course of the ascent of Man 
From an amoeboid, self-sufficient cell, 
The waxing worm divided into twain, — 
The opposite and supplemental sexes, — 
It, by the act of severance, devolved 
Upon the parted halves to join again 
In order to compound the primal whole 
And pass it thus in perpetuity. 

The fatal consequence of man and woman 

Remaining isolated and apart. 

Being destruction unto both, the efforts. 

Which each will make to bring about their union, 

Evoke the ultimates of their existence 

Involved in quiv'ring braAvn and burning brain : 

The terrors joined of fire and water, earth 

And air, to them as individuals. 

Being less potent in deterring from. 

Than the annihilation of mankind 

In moving them to meet and mate in love : 

The little lumps, life-leavened, being but 

The evanescent links of an eternal chain. 

When, haply, Hero, the fair maid of Sestus, 
Has ripened into perfect womanhood, 
Although a priestess, vowed to chastity. 
Incarcerated in a rocky tower — 
In short, immaculate, — it is a fact, 
Founded within her very flesh and blood. 
That she will bud and blossom forth her being, 
As well when she displays the lamp to guide 
Her lover's course unto her in the night. 
As when she, in despair after his death, 



HERO AND LEANDER. 51 

Leaps from her tow'r into the storm-swept sea : 
The lustrous eyes and ruby lips of woman 
Being the lamps by Nature lit within 
Her beauteous body to the self-same end ; 
And every instant's exhalation of 
Expended feeling or exhausted force 
Being an indistinguishable sigh 
From the last breath of Hero as she sinks, 
That fills a bubble on the Hellespont. 

And so the youth, Leander, of Abydus, 
Having attained unto the powers of manhood, 
Albeit hedged about by household spies. 
Will haply lie awake while others sleep ; 
And, separated from the object of 
His in-wrought and engrossing passion, by 
The waters of a boatless, bridgeless river. 
Will plunge into the cold and rapid stream 
And cross and cross again, until he sinks 
Within the whirlpool of a swirling storm : 
The will to dare evolved within his brain. 
The might to do developed in his muscle, 
In view of the event e'en from his birth. 

Again, Man being his environment 

Involved into an organism, it follows 

The formulae of all his fictile dreams 

Are in the world outside of him, objective, 

Before they are, within the mirror of 

His mind, subjective ideation. 

The two approximating continents, 

At Sestus and Abydus, symbolize 

The fairer and the stronger halves of Man 

As differentiated in his growth ; 

And the swift waters of the Hellespont 

That flow between the continental headlands, 

The line of demarcation 'twixt the twain, 

And all the woeful winds and wrecking waves 



52 ON THE ALPS- 

Encountered in the struggle to unite — 
The struggle for existence of mankind, 

I do not marvel, hence, the fabled fate 
Of Hero and Leander, founded in 
The absolute necessities of the 
Organic halves of microcosmic Man, 
And formulated by two continents 
And a dividing stream, most happily. 
Has been the poet's theme for untold time, 
Already, as it will be evermore. 

It is the lyric of organic love ; 

It is the song of the dissevered sexes ; 

It is the hymn of our humanity 

Sung in the simplest and sublimest strain ; 

And he is fit to be a harem's slave. 

And she, a nun in a sepulchral cell. 

That sings it not until the morrow hears. 



ON THE ALPS. 



There are two ghosts upon the Alps, that like two 

statues stand. 
Cut somshow from a crystal crag, hy mighty Michael's 

hand ; 
The one, the ghost of Hannibal, the Spirit of the 

Sword, 
The other, that of St. Bernard, the Spirit of the Word. 

Of equal height and bulk are they, as they afar ap- 
pear. 

But as unlike from top to toe as night and day, anear ; 

The soldier, mailed, pressing a spear into the dark 
earth driven, 

The other, bared, intent upon a cross ujjheld in Heaven. 



AMSTERDAM. 53 

Upon the warrior's right hand, a gaunt and grizzly 

hound, 
As if about to clutch a throat, upspringing from the 

ground ; 
And on his left, a rearing horse, — such as the Hun 

bestrode. 
When, like a whirlwind from the east, he swept, the 

Scourge of God ! 

Upon the right hand of the saint, a mastiff, stark and 
stanch, 

Howling for help above a wretch found in an ava- 
lanche ; 

And on his left, a spotless ox, decked with a symbol 
wreath, — 

The victor's crown to him that will for others suffer 
death. 

They are the two opposing halves of the composite 

Man, 
The Slayer and the Savior, now, as when the world 

began ; 
The right hand and the left of God, — Jehovah, Brahm, 

or Jove, — : 
The dolor of disease and death, as well as life and 

love. 



AMSTERDAM. 



The centre of the trade in diamonds (coal 
In its most perfect, pure, and precious form )- 
A solitaire, the antitype of Pitt's 
Black Diamond in the world beyond the sea : 
The excellence of this expressed in water ; 
The very soul of that, in soot and smoke ! 



54 A REVERIE IN ROME. 



A REVERIE IN ROME. 



LoQUiTUK — A Pilgrim to the Shrine of St. Peter. 



Rome ! Ruin and Regeneration ! Aye, as if the Fates, 
I-was, I-am, and I-shall-be, who rule o'er men and 

states, 
Here wrought in awful rivalry, each striving to excel, 
Keeping a world chaotic, half in heaven, half in hell I 

The Imperial City ! Aye, supreme, commanding hom- 
age from 

The wisest and the best of men, who, haply, hither 
come, 

To see in Caesar's sepulchre, the end of all in earth. 

Or, kneeling at St. Peter's shrine, in death, a second 
birth. 

The Mistress of the World ! Aye, aye, the purple of 

her robe 
Compounding with the boundless blue that wraps 

about the globe ; 
Wielding, throughout the universe, a weapon in the 

Word, 
More potent and persistent than the pow'r of Caesar's 

sword ! 

The Queen of Cities ! Aye, her throne, a peerless work 

of art. 
Wrought by a holy sculptor from the marble of the 

heart ; 
Her sceptre, the symbolic cross ; and her resplendent 

crown, 
The halo round the image of the Holy Mother thrown ! 



A REVERIE IN ROME. 55 

The Holy City ! Aye, of all, the holiest of earth — 
Above the boast of Bethlehem, the place of Jesus' 

birth, — 
Above Jerusalem, red with the life-blood of the 

Lord, — 
As long as it's the Oracle of His most Holy Word ! 

The Eternal City ! Aye, evolved, like an organic form, 
Through geologic ages, from a lowly, simple worm 
To an erect and complex man — his hopeful skull 

become 
A symbol of Eternal Life in Holy Peter's Dome ! 

The City of the Seven Hills ! Founded, for all the 

years. 
In firm substantiation of the music of the spheres ^ — 
' A symbol to the sentient soul, by the Creator given. 
To hear the heart-beat of the Earth in harmony with 

Heaven ! 

The Nameless City! Aye, a thought and feeling too 

profound, 
To be encompassed in a word and uttered in a 

sound ! — 
As to the mystic of the East, the speechless symbol 

OM, 
So to the pilgrim of the West, the silent sign of Rome ! 



^According to the ancient astronomers, the planets were 
believed to be seven ; and in accordance with this enumeration, 
the number Seven assumed a significance the value of which 
can be appreciated only in a measure to-day. It became the 
common divisor of the month and year in noting time, and of 
the octave in noting music. From the last, the phrase, " the mu- 
sic," or " the hirmony of the spheres," arose ; the number 
Seven, metaphorically, making music or harmony in the heav- 
ens as on earth. 



56 MY CASTLE IN SPAIN. 



MY CASTLE IN SPAIN. 



Loquitur — A gentleman — such as a whole-souled gentle- 
man should be at forty-nine. 



My castle is a well-built house, with spacious rooms 

and halls, 
Bay-windows, statues, open hearths, rare paintings on 

the walls, 
Books, music, billiards, bath-tub — or, a residence, in 

fine, 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty -nine ! 

My Spain is an immense estate across the stormy 

water, 
In Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio — or, no matter ; 
With a big barn, cribs, orchards, pens, and groves of 

oak and pine, 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty-nine. 

My- donjon is a cellar with a well-selected stock 
Of Burgundy, Port. Malmosie, Champagne, Bordeaux, 

and Hock — 
Or whiskey, brandy, rum, and gin, and California wine, 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty-nine. 

My secret cell, a fire-proof vault, with combination 

locks, 
And filled with filthy lucre in the form of bonds and 

stocks. 
Certificates and mortgages — in short, a silver mine, 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty-nine. 



MY CASTLli IN SPAIN. 57 

My moat is a cool mountain stream, beyond the garden 

paling, 
"With here and there a lusty trout, alid here and there 

a grayling," 
Or other fish to take the bait and try the rod and 

line — ^ ' ' '• i ■' '.'■, .I''' ■ ■■!...', 

Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty-nine. ' ' 

My warden is a faithful wife, with a becoming wealth 
Of good and generous qualities, including looks and 

health. 
And " silver threads among the gold," in harmony 

with niiiie — " 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty-nine! 

My guard, a dozen boys and girls — alternating, of 

course — 
And none a whit the better than their ancestors, or 

worse, 
Nor older than their several years — a family, in fine, 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty -nine ! 

My butler is my eldest boy, to fill his father's place, 
In public and in private, with his father's ease and 

grace, — 
Collect the rents, and carve the ducks, when old friends 

come to dine — 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty -nine ! 

My page, the youngest of my girls, a little, lisping 

miss, 

To spill my ink and spoil my pen, and get for all a 

kiss — 

H 



58 IN HOLLAND, 

A fond, forgiving father's kiss, while loving arms en- 
twine — 

Such as a whole-souled gentleman should give at 
forty -nine ! 

My dwarf, a round and rosy babe, a cute and cunning 

elf, 
To banish from the breast of all a sullen, secret self. 
And in the closest sympathy the family combine — 
Such as a whole-souled gentleman should have at 

forty-nine I 

In fine, my castle is a home, I trust, may yet be given, 

To one not bad enough for hell, nor good enough for 
heaven — 

A round, full man — a fair, square man — nor demon, 
nor divine — 

Such as a whole-souled gentleman should be at forty- 
nine ! 



IN HOLLAND. 



The myrmeleon in its hole should be 
The Hollander's heraldic coo;nizance. 



The Dutchman lives within his Hollow-land 
Like an everted turtle in its box ; 
A " native " oyster in its own half-shell ; 
Or embryonic ostrich in its egg. 



Within a fortnight of Dacota's plains. 
In this the century of steel and steam, 
It is astounding that the Dutch will filch 
" The indigested vomit of the sea," 
And fight, as never mankind fought before. 
To save it from the hunger of the beast. 



IN LONDON. 59 



IN LONDON. 



Now may I see — and sing betimes — the lottery of 

life ; 
The ultimates of Fate and Chance in the eternal strife; 
The differentiation wrought, since the great world 

began, 
In its incorporated self, the Little World of Man. 



Here sit two sisters side by side : the one in want and 

woe. 
Debased by crime, debauched by vice, the lowest of 

the low ; 
The other — God of Heaven! keep her ever in Thine 

eye ! — 
The empress of a world-wide realm, the highest of the 

high ! 



And here two brothers in a booth : the one, as vile a 

worm 
As ever wriggled by mischance into the human form ; 
The other — God of Heaven! smile forever in his 

face ! — 
The heir to the imperial crown, the noblest of his race ! 



And so — look as I will or may — the one, the most 

accursed ; 
Among mankind in wretchedness, beyond compare 

the worst ; 
The other blest beyond the best to mortal ever given — 
His very name ne'er said nor sung, without a prayer 

to Heaven ! 



6,0 THE TIEIl^^-p,IJL-F.UEGIAN. 



THE TIERRA-DEL-FUEGIAN} 



Crown-cropped ; while, in a dank and matted fringe, 
His black hair hangs around his brow and ears ; 
As if in mask or mimicry of the 
Less densely clouded zenith overhead 
And the obscuring curtain round about 
Of dark, depending, dripping fog and mist. 

Low-browed ; with broad, fiat face obscurely barred 
With reddish-brown or smeared and daubed with 

white ; 
The counterfeit presentment of the band 
Of shore surrounding, 'twixt the sea and clouds ; 
With dusky moss and lichens seamed ; or flecked 
With snow, low-lying in the dark ravines. 

Broad-shouldered and big-bodied ; brawny, bare ; 
With cramped and dwindled legs and slender arms ; 
With thongs around the wrists ; small hands and 

feet — 
So disproportionate unto his body, 
The latter lapses in its likeness to 
The limbless, glacier-smoothed and -rounded isles 
Of quartz and gneiss and granite that appear 
Above the line of the horizon, huge. 
Unshapely, — weathered humpings, smooth and bare. 

Subsisting on the shellfish of the shore ^ — 
The mussel, limpet, sea-egg, and the like, — 
With now and then a, duck-egg or a fish. 
And rarer still, an otter, goose, or seal. 
Incorporating aught and everything 
Of life around him, till existing as 
Subsisting, he embodies and expresses 



THE TIERRA-DEL-FUEGIAN. 61 

The shore-line of mankind — the lowest level — 
Or the horizon of humanity. 

Within the frail walls of his bireh-bark boat, — 
With wicker strengthened and with crushed moss 

caulked, 
With paddles crudely fashioned, and the skin 
Of seal suspended in the bow for sail, — 
Upon a hearth of clay, the ash and coals 
Of an uncertain fire, fanned into flame 
Before the bellows of the Long Reach gale ; 
Or spread and flattened into smothering smoke 
By the descending williwaw ; or whirled 
Into a cloud of sparks and ashes by 
The swift revolving gust ; or, haply, quenched 
By long continued rain or sudden splash 
Of the foam-crested billow o'er the boat. 

This fire the symbol of the slanting sun ; 
Now, glowing o'er the glaciers of the North 
And scorching all upon the sheltered shore ; 
Now, frozen to a faint, vague, whitish spot 
Beyond the overarching clouds, the while 
An icy chill succeeds the dewy sweat ; 
Now, out of sight — its presence in the sky 
Determined by a dim, diff'usive light 
Indissoluble from the mist and fog. 
The rain and sleet and snow and hail, in which 
It is involved, — revealed by that which veils. 

This fire, as well, the symbol of the soul 
Of the poor savage; now, aglow with joy 
In the expression of incarnate greed 
At the appearance of a coming ship, 
With, haply, in exchange for eggs and pelts 
And an inspection of his nakedness, 
A string of beads or palm-length of tobacco ; 
Anon, a melancholy, wretched gloom, — 



62 THE TIERRA-DEL-FUEGIAN. 

A sullen, silent, dark and dank despair, — 
A deep and all-pervading murderous mood, — 
In which the blear-eyed, gaunt and grizzled hag 
That bare him in her womb, the rather than 
His shiv'ring, cow'ring dog, falls at his feet 
Beneath his club, to fill his hung'ring maw ! 
No mercy knows he than the south-pole wind ; 
No pity knows he than the south-pole wave ; 
No sympathy with mother, wife, and babe, 
Than quartz and granite underneath his feet — 
Than walls of ice-capped mountains on all sides — 
Than sleet and hail upon his naked hide — 
Than maws around as hungry, hands as strong, 
And clubs as readv as his own to kill. 



^Originally published in the Appendix to the author's 
" Australia : A Charcoal-sketch," 1886, preceded by the fol- 
lowing note : — 

The Tierra-del-Fuegian and the Black of Australia are ap- 
proximately equally low in tlie scale of humanity. They are 
so, however, not from the same but contrary causes. The Fue- 
gian has never attained a higher stage of development than 
that in which he is found to-day; while the Black has degen- 
erated from a higher stage than that in which he is disappear- 
ing at present. The Fuegian represents the babyhood of man- 
kind in general ; while the Black is the expression of the pre- 
mature decay and second childhood of a race that at one time 
or elsewhere to-day might be set down as semi-civilized. The 
one is a resultant of the evolution of Growth ; and the other, 
of Decay. The one is an overgrown baby ; and the other, a 
stunted man. 

Curiously, moreover, they are the organic expressions of 
opposite environments : the Fuegian, of winter and water ; and 
the Australian, of summer and sand : extremes as great, per- 
haps, as may be found in the habitable globe. And that the 
contrast between them may appear in detail as well as in gen- 
eral, the following lines by the writer may serve. They were 
written from a study of several boat-loads of Fuegians encoun- 
tered in November, 1884, in the Strait of Magellan and Smyth's 
Channel. 



OLD IRELAND GOD BLESS HER ! 63 



OLD IRELAND— GOD BLESS HER!' 



Loquitur — An Irish refugee, in the customs service of China, 
at Tien-Tsin. 



There is an island in the sea, its name need not be 
spoken, 

For man and woman everywhere may know it by this 
token : 

It is the land that wheresoe'er her wand'ring sons 
address her, 

Brings from the bottom of their hearts this fond ap- 
peal, God bless her ! 



It's there the stately Shannon flows beside a low, 

thatched cottage, 
Where first I saw the light of day, and ate of poor- 

tith's pottage ; 
And by the spot my mother sleeps the sleep to virtue 

given, 
Beneath St. Patrick's symbol of the Blessed Three in 

Heaven ! 



It's there the Kerry Hills hang o'er the waters of 

Lough Leane, 
And see themselves against the sky reflected in the 

sheen ; 
Where, looking into Kathleen's eyes, when we were 

forced to part, 
I saw myself transfigured in the heaven of her heart ! 



^4 'MONT BLANC. ' * 

It's there the beauteous Cove of Cork expands into the 

ocean, 
Where, parting with the Blessed Isle, I wept with wild 

'emotion; 
My trembling lips with envy pale at my old brogans' 

bliss. 
That they should give the sacred sod my last, my fare- 
' well kiss ! ' ' ' ' ' 

It's there the fairest scenes of earth ray fancy fondly 

paints — 
The land I love beatified, the Island of the Saints ! 
May Heaven's lightning blast the arm of him that 

would oppress, her ; 
May Heaven's sunburst cheer the heart of him that 

prays, God bless her ! 



^ Printed first in The Post, Pittsburgh, Pa., on St. Patrick's 
Day, 1883. 



MONT BLANC. 



But what, you ask, does Mont Blanc look like? 

Stranger, take a chair, 
And fix your eyes upon a point till you see nothing 

there — 
Till sight is sunk, and things are not, but, haply, as 

they seem 
In an entrancing reverie or a delicious dream. 

Hast ever seen St. Peter's ? Well, Mont Blanc is like 

the dome 
Upheaved by Michael Angelo above the walls of Rome ; 
As round and white — nay, fairer far, and infinitely 

greater, 
A hemisphere of holiness upheaved by the Creator! 



THE EARTH. 65 

Or hast thou e'er seen Goethe? Well, Mont Blanc 

looks like the brow 
Of the great sage and singer, dead and buried, yet 

somehow, 
A living grandeur of the world — a deathless ghost, 

whose front 
Has been engraved by God within the everlasting 

mount ! 

Or hast thou ever seen a storm in the Atlantic ocean — 
The world of waters whirled into a white and wild 

commotion ? 
Well, well, Mont Blanc's the storm at rest ; his face 

without a frown, 
And his broad breast of billows stilled in silk and 

eider-down ! 

Or hast thou ever loved in youth a maid of truth and 

worth, 
Expanding and exalting thee above the earth of earth ? 
Well, well, Mont Blanc's fair rounded mass of purest 

snow and ice 
Is like a virgin's bosom bared by chance in Paradise! 

Or hast thou ever felt, in fine, a great engrossing grief, 
Or a pervading passion without purpose or relief? 
Well, well, Mont Blanc is like the song that gives the 

surcease sought — 
A world of feeling lifted up and crystallized in 

Thought ! 



THE EARTH. 



This pendent sphere between infinities — 
A world of wondrous worlds within itself; 
A globule in the blood of space without. 
I 



66 



PSAPPHA. 



PSAPPHA} 

Presumptuous ! preposterous ! Thou canst, my friend, 

no more 
Sing Psappha into flesh and blood, as in the days of 

yore, 
Than thou canst resurrect the dead, and give to them 

the glow. 
With which their joyous faces shone, two thousand 

years ago ! 

Perhaps, I cannot — But, methinks, that, as the shades 

of night 
Prom black to grey transfuse and fade, and then from 

gray to white, 
I can discern a woman's form emerge from out the 

gloom. 
And feel her warm breath in the wind the morning 

flowers perfume. 

Her hair, the hour bsfore the dawn, when the o'er- 

spreading rack 
Deepens tlie darkness of the night into the densest 

black ; 
A chaos of incarnate night, within whose sable folds, 
Jehovah moves in silence and a new creation holds ! 

Her brow, the first gleams of the dawn that in the east 

appear. 
After the rain and wind have rinsed and wrung the 

atmosphere ; 
A radiant front of purity, — the lustrous aureole 
Of Nature's masterpiece, a maid, with an unsullied 

soul! 



PSAPPHA. 67 

Her eyes, the azure overhead, with a faint gleam of 

light, 
Like the pale stars evanishing with the receding night ; 
A light alluring to the gaze, — the spark to woman 

given 
Inflariiing man to wield for her the thunderbolts of 

heaven ! 

Her lips, the red horizon where the sky and ocean 

glow ; 
The upper curt, as if, by chance, her pearly teeth to 

show ; 
The nether full and quivering, as if about to mutter 
The secret of a throbbing heart too rapturous to utter ! 



Her voice, the round uprising sun, the glorious orb of 

day, 
Infusing light and life and love into the coldest clay ; 
Aye, though it cease in sudden death, its tone for 

untold years. 
Continuing like light through spa'ce, the music of the 

spheres ! 



Her being, all the beauty — all the rapture of the 

world, 
Compounded in an eon, and voluptuously whirled 
Into the fairest form of earth the rays of life illumine, 
A love-impassioned, song-endowed, incomparable wo- 
man ! 



^ Commonly written SAPrno ; bnt since the poet, in the 
Jilolic dialect in which she Avrote, called herself Psappiia, she 
is called so with especial propriety in a personal portraiture. 
She is believed to have been at the zenith of her fame about 
the year 610 B. C. 



68 DIE deutscher's faderland. 



DIE DEUTSCHER'S FADERLAND} 



Loquitur. — An American citizen of German origin. 



Vat vas die Deutscher's Faderland ? I tells you dooble 

kvick, 
( Zwei lager, Hans ! ) Gesundheit ! — Ali, dot brewer 

vas a brick ! — 
Veil, after supper in mein house, I puts a keg on tap, 
Und drinks, until I close mein eyes to take von leedle 

nap. 

Sometime, den, kleine Gretchen — Ah, she vas a daisy 

girl, 
Mit himmel-blauen in her eyes und sunshine in her 

curl ! — 
She takes die tom-cat in her arms, yoost like a baby — 

so ! 
Und sings to him von leedle song vas made long time 

ago. 

Ah, vat shweet moosic fills mein ears, ven I begins to 

dream 
I vas a^iin in an old house, beside a mountain 

shtream — 
I sees mein fixder's big round vatch — I hears mein 

mutter's vord, 
Und shcares mein leedle sister mit mein brudder's 

army sword. 

Und den I goes to school again, und sees somebody 

dere. 
Dot looks yoost like dot leedle girl, dot daisy I haves 

here ; 



THE SEA. 69 

Und after vile, ven she vas big as effer she vas got, 
I shmacks her lips a hunnert times und neffer vonce 
vas caught. 

Und den I goes to part mit her, und hears a someding 

say, 
Deep in her bosom, Shtay ! Oh, shtay ! Meine Gelieb- 

te, shtay ! 
Or take me mit you ven you sails across die shtormy 

sea, 
For ven you goes mit my poor heart, you takes all 

Germany ! 

(Zwei lager, Hans!) Gesundheit — so! Now, yoii 

can unnerstand 
Vat vas die meaning of die vord. Die Deutscher's 

Faderland — 
It vas dot someding in mein breast vom vich I nefier 

part — 
It vas dot Germany I got mit Gretchen's mutter's 

heart ! 

Ah, yaw, mein freund! Dot big tom-cat — Prince 

Bismarck vas his name — 
Since Gretchen loves dot blue Maltee, I loves him yoost 

die same — 
I hangs a bell about his neck, upon a band of silk, 
Und I will giff up beer before dot cat vill vant for 

milk ! 



1 Edited by Mr. T. C. Zimmerman, the accomplished Ger- 
mon scholar, and published first in the Times and Dispatch, 
Reading, Pa., 21st February, 1884. 



THE SEA. 



The soot and, cinder of a world's combustion. 



70 COREA, OR CHOSEN. 

CO RE A, OR CHOSEN} 



Corea is a kingdom in the East — 
The far Far East of Asia — and among 
The smallest into which the continent 
Has been divided by the shears of time. 

It is the last of the exclusive realms 

And isolated of the Orient : 

And, in comparison with the adjunct 

And neighb'ring China and Japan, it is 

A sealed casket to the outer world. 

In consequence of which it is nicknamed 

The Hermit Nation, the Forbidden Land, 

And the Mysterious Peninsula. 

Unto the man of science of the age — 

The Darwin, Hseckel, Worsaae, Marsh, or Baird- 

It is invested with the interest 

And fascination that attaches to. 

The indeterminable fauna of 

A geologic period, of which 

An inappreciable half a score 

Of genera are known, between two ages. 

The fossilized remains of which have been 

Amassed in great museums and subject 

To careful study and comparison. 

To him, the merest observation is 

A theme for contemplation ; a detail, 

A subject for comparison, belike. 

From one realm to another, in a ring 

Around the globe ; and every fact established, 

A link in countless scientific chains. 



^ The several names by which the last of the exclusive 
countries of the Orient is known are as follows : Coeea, from 



COREA — IN BRIEF. 71 

Gaogowli, the name of a northern province, reduced and cor- 
rupted to Gaoli, whence Goiu, Korai, and The Corea, as the 
English commonly say, absurdly conforming to the idiom of 
the French ; Chosen, — the name in general use in Corea, Chi- 
na, and Japan, and pronounced like the past participle of the 
English verb to choose, — from Ciiao-sien, the name of a north- 
western province, and signifying the Country in the East — 
the Dawn, the Morning Calm, or Morning Serenity — being 
such, relatively considered, to the name-giving people of 
China; Sila, — a name given by Khordadbeh, an Arab geo- 
grapher, of the 9th century, — from Sinlo, a predominant prov- 
ince of the time ; Tchung-quo, a Chinese name, signifying, the 
Eastern Country ; and Sol-ho, a Manchu Tatar name, of un- 
known meaning to the writer. The several sobriquets of the 
country, as given in the poem, have lost their applicability 
since the visit of the writer, (nominally, as the surgeon of a 
Japanese steamer, the Tsuruga Mara, belonging to the Mitsu 
Bishi Company,) in the early part of 1881, by the opening of 
the country to foreigners under treaties with tlie United States 
of America, Great Britain, Germany, France, and others of the 
treaty-bound nations and fraternizing peoples of the earth. 



COREA — IN BRIEF. 



Imagine, first, a huge, four-footed beast. 

Unwieldy, Avallowing within the mud 

Of the Far Eastern Shores of Middle Asia. 

The body, now, misshapen as it lies, 

And grotesque in the shadows which it casts. 

Is the enormous realm of China; and 

The tail, defined with greater clearness and 

A little cleaner, hanging over in 

The great Pacific ocean, is Corea. 

By dubbing now the beast, The Dragon of 

The Orient, the picture is complete, 

And the mysterious peninsula, 

Corea, comprehended in the mind 

As well as — well, the Sphinx of Asia, China ! 



72 COBEA — IN BRIEF. 

This is facetious, you exclaim. So be it; 
Yet, ne'ertheless, the picture I have drawn 
Contains a rare approximation to 
The truth, and is not only applicable 
To the relations which exist between 
The two realms, as contiguous domains, 
But also and as well to those of a 
Subjective subtile character which may 
Supposably subsist between them as 
Associated states and allied peoples. 
Indeed, were I to cudgel my poor brains 
A fortnight longer, I believe, I could 
Convey no greater truth in fewer words 
Than is involved within the imaged Dragon. 

To be, now, more explicit, I may say, 
( Reversing in review the monster, ) that, 
As the Coreans are to the Chinese, 
In race, in language, and in history, 
In manners, customs, morals, government, 
.Religion, thought — in, haply, every way 
I can consider them as kindred peoples ; 
And as Corea is to China-land, 
In size and shape and situation, so 
The tail is to the body of a beast — 
In this especial instance, a huge monster, 
Conformed, compounded, and yclept, as I 
Have said, The Dragon of the Orient. 

Familiar hence, dear reader, with the beast 
In its entirety, when, hajjly, you 
Dissect the tail dissevered from the body 
In some specific treatise on Corea — 
In jDarting bone and ligament and muscle, 
And artery and vein, ( dissimilar, 
By differentiation, in detail, 
Aa they must necessarily all be, 



ON GETTING DRUNK IN PARENTHESIS. 7J^ 

But only in degree, from the like parts 

In other regions of the beast, ) you may 

Appreciate, at every cut, the life. 

Peculiar to the Chinese hulk, that has , 

Pervaded the appendage from afar, 

And every part affected, even to 

The ultimate of epithelial scales 

Attached to the depending, sea-washed tip." 



" Having carefully considered the ethnoloo'ic affinities of 
the Coreans, I cannot conceive Avhy the French Missionaries 
have reported them as resembling the Japanese much more 
than the Chinese, unless it be, that, never having traveled or 
lived among the Japanese, they knew no difference between 
them and the Coreans, and accordingly believed them to be 
very similar. The differences between the Coreans and the 
Chinese at first sight are great, but they are only superficial ; 
while those between them and the Japanese are greater and 
penetrating to the core. 



ON GETTING DRUNK— IN PARENTHESIS. 



But why does the Corean drink and get 

As drunk as whiskey made of rice can make him ? 

Or, rather, to survey mankind, like Johnson, 

From China to Peru, why do all men, 

Coreans, Hottentots, and you and I 

Get drunk? Sub rosa, I will tell you. List. 

When a Corean drinks — or you or I — 
An alcohol-intoxicating liquor, 
Primarily, it makes him more a man, 
A higher evolution than before : 
The struggle of the organism being, 
You know, to be that which it never was, 
J 



74 ON GETTING DRUNK — IN PARENTHESIS. 

And is not. In the sinking, soggy earth 

Of his embodied being, it excites 

A pleasurable feeling of expansion 

And elevation ; and, within the dark 

And murky sky of his imagination 

It kindles fiery thoughts, within the flash 

And flame of which, albeit for an instant, 

A glimpse is seen of an exalted life, 

A higher, happier, and holier 

Existence than e'er felt or feigned before. 

The sinner thus becomes a saint ; the fool, 

A sage ; the coward, a brave soldier ; and 

A beggar in his tatters in a ditch, 

A king, in silk and velvet, on a throne ! 

This is the reason the Corean drinks — 

Or you or I — a reason founded in 

The meat and marrow of his very being. 

He wants what liquor gives primarily. 

Though secondarily — aye, there's the rub ! 

The evil of intoxicating liquor 

Is not in getting drunk, but getting sober ! 

For, just in the proportion whiskey makes, 

Primarily, a drinker more a man, 

So, secondarily, a sob'rer less — 

Reducing him, from the tiptopmost peak 

Of manhood and of purity, down through 

The several descending stages of 

The semi-civilized and of the savage, 

Unto the lowest wallow of the beast 

In nameless, unimaginable filth ! 

In saying which — in confidence, remember — 
You will observe, and make a note of it. 
That, while I have descanted with one tongue, 
I have not had one eye upon the subject. 
But looked with my two eyes, as it behooves 
A man, in order to attain the truth — 
In strict accordance with the wisdom of 



THE FUNGHWANG. 75 

His ancestors in their entirety 
Transmitted to him and expressed within 
The severed senses of his organism. 



EXCLUSIVE CHOSEN. 



The ultimatum of the glyptodon : 
Encompassed in a hard and compact case ; 
Incapable of further evolution ; 
Impenetrable to the world without ; 
An extinct monster still among the living. 



THE FUNGHWANG, THE DRAGON, AND THE 
FENG-SHUI. 



Chosen ! where the gallant game-cock, — 

Combed and spurred and flecked and painted 

Gaudily from head to tail-tip, 

Crowing loudly in the morning, 

Rousing the Coreans from their 

Slumbers to behold the sun rise 

From the great Pacific ocean, — 

Has, in the imagination 

Of the roused and wond'ring people, 

Passed into a bird of fancy — 

Passed into a bird of fiction — 

Passed into the fabled Funghwang ! 

Feathered with the rarest jewels, 

Rubies, sapphires, pearls, and diamonds ; 

Speaking with a voice prophetic 

Unto those who seek to know their 

Fate within the coming morrow — 

Warriors, before the battle — 



76 THE DRAGON. 

Ministers, with secret plottiiigs — 

Kiiigs, with horrible misgivings ! 

Aye, evolved into the Funghwang, 

The prophetic Bird of Morning, 

Nesting in the land of Chosen, 

Rising in a blaze of beauty — 

Rising in the gold and glitter 

Of the oriental sunrise ! 

Winging thence its wandering westward, 

Till behold it reappearing 

In the Phcenix of Arabia, 

And the Sphinx of the ^Egyptians ! ^ 

Beauteous, jeweled, Wondrous Funghwang ! 

Stripped of its ideal plumage, 

But a gaudy, gallant game-cock — 

But a spangled, strutting dunghill — 

But a common, crowing chicken ! 

Like the proud bird of the fable. 

Posing in a peacock's plumage. 

Found on plucking but a jackdaw ! 

Chosen ! where the striped tiger. 

Haunting mountain, haunting valley, 

From the far east to the far west. 

From the far south to the far north, 

Killing horses, dogs, and cattle. 

Killing bold men in the day time. 

Killing bolder in the night time. 

Striking terror to the marrow 

Of the boldest and the bravest ! 

Till, in the imagination 

Of the people of Corea, 

What the word, the most terrific 

In the ears of all the people. 

But the title of the tiger ? 

What the form, the most appalling 

In the eyes of all the people, 

But the picture of the tiger ? 



THE FENG-SHUI. 77 

Till, at length, the wily chieftain, . 

To impress upon the people 

His assumed or actual power, 

Dubs himself, not Caesar,^ from the 

Massive elephantine monster, 

But an ear-appalling Tiger ? * 

And, as well, the cunning soldier, 

To impress upon his foemen. 

His assumed or actual valor. 

Paints upon his flaunting banner, 

Not the Cross, the sign of inanhood, 

Not the Crescent, sign of woman. 

But an eye-appalling symbol 

Of the tiger, called the Dragon ! ^ 

Aye, the Dragon of the standards 

Of the oriental nations, 

China, Nipon, and Corea, 

Is none other' than the tiger, • . 

Ranging from the earth's equator 

Half way to the polar circle,* 

And abounding in Corea, — 

Of all savage beasts, the fiercest, 

Of all savage beasts, the fellest, 

The ferocious banded tiger 

The terrific Bengal Tiger, 

Like a special incarnation 

Of a storm-cloud streaked with lightning I 

Chosen ! where the trader coming 
From the northern wilds of Asia, 
Telling of the Avondrous wild beast, 
Of the most stupendous bigness, 
Of the most prodigious likeness, 
Found imbedded in the glaciers 
And the frozen sand and mud banks. 
Perfect, even to the lustre 
Of the eyes beneath the eyelids, 
As if closed upon the coming 



78 THE FENG-SHUI. 

Of the beast into the sunshine, 
Causing death unto it, haply; 
And, in proof of his strange story, 
Showing to the wond'ring people — 
Selling to the wond'ring people — 
The enormous iv'ry tushes 
Of the mighty wool-clad monster ! 
Till, in the imagination 
Of the people of Corea, 
Lo ! a mighty mole-like monster 
Burrowing beneath the surface 
Of the country of Corea — 
Of the countries of the whole earth ; 
Living in the earth and darkness, 
Dying in the air and sunshine; 
Causing the prodigious earthquake 
By the shaking of its body ; 
.Causing the volcano also 
In its awful rage and fury ; 
Causing all the strange and awful 
Evils in the earth and on it — 
All the floods and drouths and tempests 
All the fevers, wars, and famines — 
All the woes innumerable 
That afflict the helpless people 
Of Corea and the whole earth ! 
An o'erwhelming mundane monster, 
All-involving and controlling, 
The protean, many headed, 
Mythic, mystic, Mongol monster, 
The illimitable Feng-Shui ! — 
The symbolic Wind-and- Water ! — 
Of all Mongol myths, the strongest 
Factor in impeding progress 
In the little world of Chosen, 
And the mighty world of China ! — 
Aye, the Feng-Shui of Corea 
And the wondrous world of China, 



THE FENG-SHUI. 79 

Is none other than the mummy 

Of the elephantine Mammoth 

Found imbedded in the glaciers 

And the frozen sand and mud banks 

Of the northern wilds of Asia — 

An inert and senseless mummy, 

Not alone of a departed 

Mammoth, but the Age of Mammoths ! ' 



^For further information about this wonderful bird, the 
curious reader is referred to The History of Corea, by the Rev. 
James Ross, pp. 189-195 ; and The Hermit Nation, by Wm. E. 
Griffis, p. 304 ; but the fact that the Funghwang is a mythic 
or fabulous evolution from the chicken-cock interblended with 
the blaze of the rising sun, as outlined in the poem, is found 
in neither. The Chinese, however, have not lost sight of the 
ideal bird's original in nature ; and from their pictorial repre- 
. mentations, noted by the writer during his travels in the north- 
ern provinces of China in the spring of 1881, it became known 
to him and led in due time to the conclusions stated. 

^ This, at first sight, may appear as improbable as far-fetch- 
ed, even to those who have made the evolution and dispersion 
of myths and fables a study, but, it is believed by the writer, 
that a critical examination of all the circumstances involved 
in the Funghwang of the Coreans, the Phoenix of Herodotus, 
and the Sphinx — S-phoen-'x — of (Edipus and in general, will 
confirm their common origin — the prophetic chanticleer com- 
pounded with the glorious falfillment of his prophesy .in the 
fiery splendors of the rising sun. 

^ The word Ciesa7% signifying elephant, is Punic, or Phceni- 
cian. It was borrowed from the Carthaginians as a regal title 
by the Romans before they had become acquainted with either 
the African or the Asiatic species save by report, and presuma- 
bly without knowing its primary meaning ; for when they be- 
held the huge mammal in objective reality, they applied to it 
the Grecian name among them of the vaguely known stag, El- 
ephas. The latter word, however, never became a regal title, 
nor associated with the pride and pomp of state, except in the 
title of the little known and less important Order of the Ele- 
phant, instituted by Christian I., of Denmark, revived, after 
lapsing into desuetude, by Frederik II., and continued by his 



80 THE FENG-SHUI. 

successors, and in the family name Oliphant, derived either 
from a heraldic blazon or a tavern-sign, the well-known Ele- 
phant and Castle, which, in the vagarious realm of art, by les- 
sening the beast and elongating its burden, has become the 
colloquial Pig and Whistle. The word Ciesar, having been 
the first to enter the field of honor and empire in Europe, has 
excluded all synonymous rivals. 

* Several instances may be found in Ross's History, pp., 59, 
241, and 249. In Japan, the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, 
and other islands of the Pacific, where the elephant, the lion, 
and the tiger are unknown, the name of the Shark is assumed 
by great warriors in the stead of Csesar, Leo or Louis, and Woo 
or Yenban, and their equivalents. 

^ Generally, the Bengal tiger is ignored by the outside bar- 
barian and foreign devil, but not by the Chinaman and his 
neighbors, as the father in fact of the so-called Dragon of ori- 
ental fancy ; and vaguely by some, the object in nature from 
which the ideal monster has sprung, is conjectured to be the 
puny parachute-lizard of Asia, Draco volans ; and very vaguely 
by others, a hypothetic dragon of the Tertiary Age, still flap- 
ping about and striking terror in the minds of the descendants 
of a hypothetic Miocene Man ; and very, very vaguely by otli- 
ers still, the frightful flying-croccdile, Pterodactyle, of an ear- 
lier geologic age ! By the way, several of the tricks of the 
Chinese artists, in imparting a seeming rapidity of movement 
to their motionless images of the tiger in paint, wood, ivory, 
stone, and bronze — notably, in the superb ornamental ad- 
juncts to the astronomical instruments of the observatory of 
Peking, — are among their ultimate and most admirable achieve- 
ments. 

"The fauna of the Tertiary age from the Miocene down, 
wliich there is some reason to believe passed before the eyes of 
primaeval man, would aff'ord ample material for gorgons, drag- 
ons, sylphs, and satyrs, leviathan and behemoth, and the whole 
list of ancient and fcibulous monsters. The birds with teeth, 
and the winged lizard of the Secondary age, ( the Pterodac- 
tyle, ) known very well by its fossil remains, if clothed with 
flesh and provided with limbs and wings, would make a crea- 
ture in some respects like the dragon of fairy tales." — Samuel 
Kneeland. 

The living Bengal tiger, however, is all-sutficient for the 
Dragon of the Orient; the living chicken-cock, for the Fung- 
hwang and Phoenix ; and the ice-encased mammoth in its enti- 
rety for the awful earth-emboweled Feng-shui. 



THE MEDITEREANEAN. 81 

^But howsoever great this geographic range north and 
south of the Bengal tiger, it is doubled by that of the allied 
cougar or panther of America, ( Felis concolor, ) — from ice to 
ice across the equator ! 

' ^ Cf., in confirmation, the following, from the Encyclopae- 
dia of Kangiii, in which the mammoth, ( Euelephas primigen- 
ius, ) alone is referred to : — 

" The cold is extreme and almost continual on the coast of 
the Northern Sea, beyond the Tai-tong-Kiang. On this coast 
is found the animal Fen-shu, which resembles a rat in shape, 
but is as big as an elephant. It dwells in dark caverns, and 
ever shuns the light. There is obtained from it an ivory as 
white as that of the elephant, but easier to work, and not lia- 
ble to split. Its flesh is very cold, and excellent for refreshing 
the blood." 

Also, the following, from an ancient book, called the Shik- 
Y-KiNG, in which the larger beast spoken of is the mammoth, 
and the smaller, the woolly rhinoceros, ( E. Hchorrhinus and a 
new species, R. Merkii, connecting the former with the living 
species, ) — 

" There is in the extreme north, among the snows and ice 
which cover this region, a shu which weighs up to a thousand 
pounds. Its flesh is very good for those Avho are heated. The 
TsE-SHU calls it Fen-shu, and speaks of another kind which is 
of less size, or about as large as a buflalo, according to this au- 
thority. It burrows like the moles, shuns the light, and almost 
always stays in its underground caves. It is said that it would 
die if it saw the light of the sun, or even of the moon." 



THE MEDITERRANEAN. 



The grandest water-way upon the globe ! 
The march of Man from an enlighten'ed East 
To an o'ershadowed West, and back again, 
From an illumined West to a dark East. 
As if the one half only of the world 
Should be awake the while the o±er slept. 
K 



82 LA BELLE PRANCE. 



LA BELLE FRANCE. 



Loquitur — A wretched wanderer, a Frenchman, between 
Baalbec and Damascus, Syria. 



La Belle France ! — Ah, there was a time, those words 

within me stirred 
The spirit of a son of France, whenever they were 

heard ! 
A son of France, with heart to do, what other men 

have done ; 
A son of France, with hope to win, what other men 

have won ! 

When, in the vision of my youth, the great Napoleon's 

form 
Rose with the awful grandeur of an overwhelming 

storm, 
And sank into the secret self, I fancied, with a start, 
That I could feel imprisoned in the donjon of my 

heart ! 

When, with a love enchanting life, I clasped the fair 
Lisette ; 

When, with a hate enchanting death, I spurned the 
false coquette ; 

Henceforth to go from bad to worse, and then from 
worse to worst, — 

A weary, wasted wanderer, — this ghastly thing ac- 
cursed ! 

woman ! what a world to man art thou to make or 

mar! 
To ope the doors to wealth and fame, or close them 

with a bar ; 



THE PLAIN OF TROY. 83 

To place a crown upon a head, or noose about a neck ; 
To make a man a demigod, or — this abandoned 
wreck ! 



La Belle France ! God forgive me, No ! A whited 

sepulchre, 
As long as it entombs Lisette and what is foul in 

her; 
Or till these shrunken, shivering limbs lie mould'ring 

in. the earth. 
And Lethe leaves one thought alone — the dear land 

of my birth ! 



THE PLAIN OF TROY. 



Stop ! Poet, in thy pilgrimage ! and rest thee from 

thy toil, 
For here thy weary footfalls press upon thy sacred 

soil! 
This is the Plain of Ilium ! these wide and wistful 

views. 
The Palestine of Poesy ! — the Mecca of the Muse ! 

This is the grand environment of gods and godlike 

men — 
The seas, the sands, the sunlit skies, the very same as 

when 
The Blind Bard sang, as blind bards see, the earth and 

heaven human, 
And the great world revolving round the fair form of a 

woman ! 



84 THE PLAIN OF TROY. 

The air is inspiration, breathe ! the things are thoughts, 

behold ! 
The wind and wave are music, list ! and sing anew the 

old! 
Aye, let thy soul expand into the spirit of this shrine, 
And make its immortality indissolubly thine ! 

What ! sing of Zeus in Saxon song ! and, in vicarious 

verse. 
The direful consequences of Achilles' wrath rehearse? 
As well wake up the Wooden Horse, of Sinon's wily 

scheme. 
To work for us the wonders of the steed of steel and 

steam ! 

The world has long outgrown the Greek: the classic 

siege of Troy 
Belongs not to the bearded man, but to the bookish 

boy, 
Whose folios, filled with the forms of the Homeric 

hosts. 
Are but the fossil-bearing shales of buried mental 

coasts. 

Aye, aye, as well inveigle the primaeval trilobite 

To join the jeweled humming-bird in its aerial flight, 

As summon Hector with his sword and buckler to 

repel 
The soldier now advancing in a storm of shot and 

shell ! 

It is the Poet's function to embody in his song 

The spirit of the age and clime to which he may 
belong ; 

To feel, with comprehensive heart, think, with con- 
structive mind. 

And voice the vital universe in numbers for mankind. 



VALHALLA. 85 

It is God help the sorry bard, that, ere his num- 
bers swell, 

Ensconces, like a hermit-crab, his bare breech in the 
shell 

Of a departed whelk of worth, its shelter to enjoy — 

God help the sorry bard to-day that sings the siege of 
Troy ! 



VALHALLA. 



Hast ever seen at even, through the sun-illumined 

mist 
That veils and yet reveals in a diffusive amethyst, 
A mountain mass of bowlders, crags, and snow-capped 

peaks arise 
In grim, chaotic grandeur and weird beauty in the 

skies ? 



So, in the purple glamour of a vision of the past, 

Valhalla rises in review, inviting, vair, and vast ! 

Its rude and rugged features in the foreground lightly 

limned. 
And all that's foul and frightful in the distance deftly 

dimmed. 

In mortal guise, grim Odin sits, within the spacious 
hall. 

At the great groaning table's head, the sovran lord of 
all ; 

Ruling the world, not by the right involved in wis- 
dom's word. 

But by the right wrought by the might that wields the 
strongest sword ! 



Ob VALHALLA. 

Perched on his brawny shoulders, see ! — in sable hue 
to mark 

The thoughts and memories that move mysterious in 
the dark, — 

The ravens twain, which o'er the world take their di- 
urnal flight. 

And whisper what they've seen and heard in Odin's 
ears at night. 



And at his feet, two monstrous wolves, — symbolic of 

the greed 
With which a greater god than man must obviously 

feed, — 
Two monstrous wolves that eat his meat, in lieu of the 

divine, 
The while the god regales himself with far-fetched 

precious wine. 



While, to the right and to the left, within his royal 

sight, 
An untold throng of heroes eat and drink throughout 

the night ; 
Their hunger never satisfied, their thirst, too, never 

quenched, 
Albeit gorged from dusk to dawn, and copiously 

drenched I 



The meat that steams upon the board, the flesh of a 

wild boar, 
That's killed and cooked and served about, a hundred 

times and more ; 
But though dismembered and devoured, in every 

night-long feast, 
It reappears next morning an unscathed, unsodden 

beast ! 



VALHALLA. 87 

The mead that foams within the horns the happy he- 
roes hold, 

The milk that flows from a she goat within Valhalla's 
fold,— 

Browsing upon a wondrous tree, of which the sages 
tell, 

And dripping daily from her dugs a stoop of hydro- 
mel! 



The maids that serve with supple limbs, the same that 

seek the plain 
Strewn with the battle's gory dead, and, from among 

the slain, 
Select the bravest of the brave, who fought, nor feared 

to fall, 
To meet the warrior's reward in Odin's sumptuous 

hall ! 



Anon, an hour before the dawn, at Odin's stern com- 
mand, 

The bard of bards, great Bragi,^ takes his harp within 
his hand, 

And, as the tuneful strings resound amid the joyous 
jar, 

Sings loud and long the matchless song that stirs the 
heart to war ! 



And lo ! at the first peep of day, as the wild music 

dies, 
The heroes cast their horns aside, and, loudly cheering, 

rise; 
And seizing each his sword and shield, that hang upon 

the wall. 
Rush, with the surging ocean's roar, from out the 

ringing hall ! 



5» VALHALLA. 

And from the dawn to dusk, behold ! upon a mighty 

plain, 
The untold throng of heroes fight their battles o'er 

again ; 
Till, falling as they fell on earth, with many a gaping 

wound, 
They lie in ghastly, gory heaps upon the reeking 

ground ! 

Until the night sets in, when lo ! the dead leap into 
life, 

As when at dawn they sallied forth and met in warlike 
strife ; 

And taking each his weapon, like the hero's self re- 
stored. 

Repair to eat and drink again at Odin's sumptuous 
board ! 

So hath the warfare of the world and grim organic 

greed 
Evolved in the Berserker's ^ brain, the fallen warrior's 

meed ; 
A fight by day, a feast by night, in his ecstatic vision, 
Above all other happiness, or felt or feigned, elysian ! 



^ With the exception of the part performed by Bragi, the 
god of eloquence and poetry, ( Cf., Englif h lard ar.d Irag, ) the 
description here given of Valhalla follows the authoritative 
Eddas of Father Ssemiind Sigfusson and Snorri Sturlason. 

^Commonly the word -BerserA'fr is said by etymologists to 
be the Norse for English hare-shirter. Then, contrary to the id- 
iom of both languages, this bare-ehirter is said to mean a warri- 
or who goes into battle without a coat of mail ! Then the fab- 
ulist and the myth-maker take up the Scandinavian sans-culolte, 
and — no matter, here. The word is simply a compound of 
her, the sea, and serker, a searcher or seeker; meaning, ac- 
cordingly, sea-searcher, sea-rover, or pirate. B-R, and their 
equivalents, signifying the sea, occur in scores of Avords and 
should be known to all linguists. 



THE CRYSTAL PALACE OF THE CZAR. 89 



THE CRYSTAL PALACE OF THE CZAR} 



The czar commands. — And lo ! as if he'd waved a 

magic wand, 
Upon the winter's crystal bridge, the Neva's waters 

spanned. 
Uprose a wondrous structure, decked with many a 

strange device, 
From base to crucial pinnacle, a palace of pure ice ! 

The czar commands. — Throughout the realm, north, 

south, and east and west. 
The minions speed across the snows in keen and eager 

quest, 
Until, among the ragged serfs that throng the Volga's 

wharfs. 
Are found a wretched man and maid, two hideous, 

hunchbacked dwarfs ! 

The czar commands. — The wretches doff their ragged 

garbs, and don 
The richest robes of silk and gold ; and, seated on a 

throne 
Of ice, beneath the crystal dome, on Neva's frozen tide, 
Await the czar to wed them thus, a bridegroom and a 

bride ! 

The czar commands. — A thousand lords and ladies of 

the land 
Assemble in St. Petersburg, and long in waiting stand, 
Until the merry monarch shall precede them on the 

ice. 
To greet the dwarfs in mockery, and wed them in a 

trice ! 

L 



90 THE TITLE OF THE CZAR. 

The czar commands. — A trumpet sounds — a hundred 

cannons roar ! — 
The ice, responsive to the shock, upheaves from shore 

to shore. 
Then gently swells, as if with pride, beneath the gilded 

car. 
In which the mighty monarch rides, the merry-making 

czar ! 

The czar commands. — But, Christ behold! the bride- 
groom and the bride, 

Immovable in gaudy state, sit speechless side by side ! 

Within the palace walls of ice, upon their crystal 
thrones. 

The life-blood frozen in their hearts, the marrow in 
their bones ! 

The czar commands. — But from that day until his 

latest breath, 
A spectre haunts his wretchedness, the hideous dwarfs 

in death ! 
Anticipating every joy, and chilling, in a trice. 
His blood, as when he stepped within the palace built 

of ice ! 



^Whether or not this story is founded in fact, is unknown 
to the writer. It Avas suggested to him by a large painting on 
exhibition in the Academy of Arts at the time of his visit to 
the Paris of the North. The picture represents the horrifying 
discovery of the czar. 



THE TITLE OF THE CZAR. 



The lion and the elephant — how proud 

The beasts should be, that their great conqueror, Man, 

Should take their names to indicate his greatness ! 

Louis le Grand is simply the big lion ; 

And Cassar, Kaiser, Czar, the elephant ! 



A CAPTIVE IN SWEDEN. 91 



A CAPTIVE IN SWEDEN. 



On seeing a stunted stalk of American Maize in the centre 
of a bed of flowers in a public garden of Stockholm. 



Wretched, wretched fellow mortal, 
From the world beyond the ocean, 
Rooted here, a stunted starv'lhig 
In the country of the fir-tree — 
In the country of the reindeer — 
In the country of the Snow Kmg, 
Ruling, with a rod of iron. 
All created, from the Baltic 
To the Arctic Ocean, Sweden ! 

Wasted, in this cold and damp soil. 
Withered, in this chill and wet wind. 
Doomed to death, a helpless stranger 
Cast upon a savage sea-coast — 
Doomed to death, ere thou hast yielded 
Of the bounty of thy being — 
Of the golden, golden bounty 
Of thy being unto others 
Of thy fellow mortal creatures. 

Aye, like Franklin, the explorer, 
Doomed to perish in his manhood 
Chained amid the polar ice-bergs; 
Or the Russian noble, severed 
From his family and kindred. 
And, amid Siberian snow -fields, 
Stinted both in food and raiment, 
Stunted both in mind and body. 
Till, at last, at three and thirty. 
Cast into a drift, a carcase, 



92 . A CAPTIVE IN SWEDEN. 

Shrivel'd, shrunken, scarce a maw-full 
To the prowling wolf of winter ! 

Yet, niethinks, among the herbage 
That surrounds thee in this garden. 
Like a guard of petty jailors, — 
Thou, brave plant, erect and stately. 
Plumed and decked with silken honors, 
Bearest thy misfortune nobly ! 
Like the great imperial captive, 
Bonaparte, at St. Helena, 
Undismayed among the minions 
Of the Mistress of the Ocean — 
Still the manifest commander ! 
Still the proud and haughty victor, 
Whose achievements had enrolled him 
First among the world's great soldiers ! 
E'en as thou art here a captive, 
Still the chief among the grasses — 
Still the king among the corn-plants — 
Still the victor of the valley 
Of the mighty Mississippi — ■ 
First and greatest of the New World's 
Golden gifts unto the Old World ■ — 
Mighty Maize, imperial Zea ! 

Aye, methinks, brave plant, thou meetest 
Thy destruction in the Old World, 
With a calm, heroic firmness 
Worthy of thy native New World — 
Worthy of thy noble New World ; 
Where thy kinsman, Guatemozin, 
Bound, above the blazing fagots. 
By his cruel Spanish captors. 
Smiled, as smiles a happy father 
When he bends to kiss his first-born 
Sleeping on its mother's bosom ! — 
Smiled, and spake, to ease the anguish 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 93 

Of his friend and fellow victim 
Writhing on the grill beside him, 
" Rest I on a bed of roses ! " 

Now, farewell ! thou noble captive ! 
Wheresoever I may wander 
Over land or over water, 
Thy heroic form and features, 
In the hour of thy destruction, 
Shall, in my imagination. 
Take the semblance of a brother, 
Giving solace in my sorrow. 
Giving firmness in my faintness, 
Giving virtue in my vileness, — 
Saying to me kindly, calmly, 
" Native of the noble New World, 
Be thou worthy of the New World, 
Free to wander with the wild wind. 
Or devoted to destruction. 
Still uphold thee like a victor. 
Unto death, thy life triumphant ! " 



THE ALHAMRA. 



There is a secret charm about the place. 
I cannot see it, but I feel its spell — 
As if Caligorant had cast his net 
Upon me here and bound me to the spot. 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 



The grandeur of the German Empire grows, 

The longer I remain within its borders ; 

As I have known the might and majesty 

Of thundering Niagara to swell 

From a big waterfall at first unto 

An overwhelming wonder on acquaintance ! 



94 IN THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 



IN THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 



While half the ever-whirling globe's aglow in the sun's 
light,^ 

The other's in the shadow of itself in blackest night; 

Hence mortal man, the microcosm, the world incorpo- 
rate. 

Between extremes in everything doth likewise alter- 
nate. 

What's snow-white to one person is as soot-black to 

another ; 
What's lovely to the sister is as loathesome to the 

brother ■ 
What's at one time the greatest good is at another evil ; 
What's worshiped this year as a God, next year's the 

very devil ! 

So weal and woe, and love and hate, are ever changing 

faces ; 
And wealth and want, and life and death, are ever 

changing places ; 
As if the world — according to our philosophic sur- 
vey- 
Were constant only in one thing, in turning topsy- 
turvy ! 

And what more striking proof than this, here, in Pa- 
lermo's tomb — 

The aisles and cells and corridors of this vast cata- 
comb, — 

The ghastly skulls and mouldering bones and flesh- 
dust of the dead 

Appareled in the garments of the living overhead ! 



IN THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 95 

For every beggar in the streets, in ragged wretchedness, 
Here is a mummied mockery in an imperial dress ; 
For every meagre starveling, in want and woe abject. 
Here is a pile of bones and dust in pearls and dia- 
monds deckt ! 



Haste, haste the day Time's turn-about will melt old 

JEtna's snow, 
And send a mighty lava-flood into the vale below, 
That the survivors of the great catastrophe may learn 
The use of the volcanic verbs, to bury and to burn ! 



But this is now nor time nor place for philosophic 

dreams ; 
For why, the cicerone talks, and list'ning us beseems ; 
While on we go from cell to cell, pursued by scores of 

cats 
Imprisoned in the sepulchre to kill marauding rats. 



A soldier this — x'Vs brave a man as e'er faced unseen 

ball ; 
Ever the foremost with a heart no danger could appal ; 
The hero of a dozen wars; bedizened o'er with brass; 
And, in an hour of triumph, killed — kicked by a ped- 

ler's ass ! 



And this a bride — Of forty-four; if not just in her 

prime. 
At least, as woman's nature is, just in the nick of time ; 
Who, turning to her wedded lord to give the nuptial 

kiss. 
Sank to the floor a pallid corpse, and then decayed to 

this ! 



96 IN THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 

A statesman this — Aye, when he lived, the Isle of 

Sicily 
Was an imprisoned lion's cage to such a man as he ! 
Indeed a hemisphere could not contain his mighty 

schemes, 
And yet this little cell now holds both him and all his 

dreams ! 

An actress this — Upon the stage, arrayed in silk and 
gold, 

Cle&patra, Zenobia, or other queen of old ; 

Behind the scenes, a fiddler's wife, suckling a child be- 
got 

Of dissipation and excess, a helpless idiot! 

A doctor this — A wretched man, to gain a livelihood. 
Hobnobbing with Disease and Death and dabbling in 

foul blood ; 
Until by chance his scalpel slipped and pricked him in 

the thigh. 
And people stared that such a wound should make a 

doctor die ! 

A beauty this — In Sicily, perhaps, without a peer; 
Her hand in matrimony sought, by nobles far and 

near ; 
And yet she wed a low buffoon, not worth a pod of 

pepper ; 
Danced on a wire in spangled tights, and died — a 

loathesome leper ! 

A poet this — No ; not a youth with youthful passion 
fired, 

But an old man, of lore profound, by purest love in- 
spired, 

Who wrote a mighty epic of imperishable fame ; 

A native of Palermo, but — I have forsrot his name! 



IN THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 97 

And this the mother of twelve sons — A woman, too, 

as blest 
As ever suckled hungry babe upon a bounteous breast ; 
For none of them before her death died either poor 

or young, 
Except the first to warn the rest, and he was early 

hung ! 

A sculptor this — The same that cut the gross, indecent 
group 

That damns Palermo's central fount — a nude encir- 
cling troop 

Of wanton water-gods and nymphs — a monstrous 
personage array 

Amid the mangled heads of a decapitate menagerie ! 

And this a boy — A prodigy — a miracle of lore ; 

Acquainted with all history and human art before 

He reached his sixteenth summer: and, before he 

reached his next, — 
" Those whom the gods love, perish young," I think's 

the old Greek text. 

A beggar this — A mendicant, most miserably poor. 
Limping along for sixty years, or more, from door to 

door; 
Found dead at last in a damp cell, amid a mass of 

mold, 
His wasted, Avretched carcase prone on thrice its 

weight of gold ! 

A painter this — A drunken sot and maddened debau- 
chee — 

A beastly bacchanalian of the very worst degree ; 

And yet evolving from his vice his work the most ap- 
proved, 

A Mary, the Immaculate, by God himself beloved ! 

M 



98 IN THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 

And this a priest — A holy man, fasting for years alone, 
His weight exceeding never once as much as sixteen 

stone ; 
And drinking only water fresh and pure from flowing 

river ; 
And yet the doctors all agreed he died of hob-nailed 

liver ! 



A harlot this — Cleansing herself, at least, of patch 

and paint, 
Became at sixty-five a nun and died next year a saint ; 
Her wealth bequeathed in charities unto a motley 

crowd, 
A nunnery established, and a hospital endowed. 



And this a fool — A happy dog, laughing the livelong 

day, 
Turning to mirth the cares of earth, and soaking well 

his clay ; 
The father of some sixteen boys, and eighteen girls, 

or more, » 

And dying at the good old age of fourteen and four 

score ! 



A lawyer this — An honest man as ever drew a brief; 
And 5^et considered commonly a trickster and a thief; 
But such, in fine, 's the moral of the stories I rehearse. 
The fact and its attendant fame are often the reverse. 



And so the cicerone went, satirical and witty. 
From skeleton to skeleton, in the sepulchral city. 
Making the ugly mockery of Death like Life arrayed, 
A still more ghastly spectacle^, a mirthful masquerade ! 



THE CRUSADES IN SONG. 99 



THE CRUSADES IN SONG. 



In contemplating the Crusades in Song, 

It is incumbent on the philosophic 

To note as well the singer as the subject. 

A poem being the result of a 

Relation 'twixt the poet and his theme ; 

And no two bards being identical 

In aught essential to a son of song, 

It follows that the poems which involve 

In their construction the Crusades, diverge 

As widely as the several poets, in 

Whose variable brains the Holy Wars 

Have been idealized, and in whose art, 

As variable as their brains, their thoughts 

Have found expression in poetic form. 

To the poetic youth, that, haply, finds. 

In the exuberance of health and vigor, 

A pleasure in the exercise of the 

Increasing powers of his mind and body. 

The Middle Ages seem a holiday ; 

The sands of Syria, a sunny mead ; 

The wars of the Crusades, a game of ball ; 

The lion-hearted Richard, captain of 

The Nine distinguished by the Cross of Christ, 

And Saladin, the captain of their rivals. 

Distinguished by the Crescent of Muhammad ; 

The Holy Sepulchre, the gilded ball, 

Or tinseled belt, the trophy of the winners ; 

The very distance of the scene of action 

Lending the charm of freedom from restraint. 

In which the bounding and ambitious boy 

Fancies achieved the end of his existence. 

His independence founded firmly, and 



100 THE CRUSADES IN SONG, 

His individuality maintained 

Among mankind, a factor, like his sire, 

In the formation of society, 

Religion, law, and government, e'en as 

So many merry games to suit himself ! 

happy, hopeful, head- and heart-strong boy ! 

Blind-folded to misfortune, woe, and death ; 

Sailing the seas in self-manned cockle-shells. 

And riding out with ease the storm in which 

The strongest ship would be o'erwhelmed and 

wrecked ; 
Coasting on self- wrought jumpers down Mont 

Blanc 
A length before a thund'ring avalanche, 
And leaping, with a thrill of wild delight, 
A precipice of a sheer thousand feet, 
As safely as a breaker on the hillside ; 
And so encompassing the Holy Wars, 
Extending o'er two centuries, in time, 
Enacted on three continents, in space, 
And, in a myriad of fopras, involving 
The slaughter of as many human beings 
As would suffice to stock the planet Mars ! — 
Encompassing, in fine, all this within 
The merry, merry metes and bounds of base-ball ! 

So, to another poet, a fairniaid, 
Expanding into womanhood, in whom 
Feeling and fancy bear full sway by turns. 
The Middle Ages seem the midnight hour ; 
The plains of Palestine, the gilded hall ; 
The Christians and Muhammadans in arms. 
Her rival lovers at her side in mask — 
The red b,lood of the vanquished Saracen 
And the red-cross of the victorious Frank, 
From rose-buds haply indistinguishable ; 
The flashing of the sword and scimetar, 
The glances of her jealous rivals from 



THE CRUSADES IN SONG. 101 

The east and from the west within her sight • 
The battle-cry, the curse, the rush and roar 
Of armies in defeat and victory. 
The hurried whispers in her ears at parting ; 
And the world's prize for which the hosts contend- 
ed, 
The Holy Sepulchre of Christ, her heart ! 
O beauteous bubble in the sunshine, maid ! 
Unconscious of the world of woe and wrack 
Beneath the pressure of her earth-fixed feet, 
E'en while her head and heart are high in heaven ; 
Looking across the burning sands of life 
And living in expectant ecstasy 
In the fair Paradise of the mirage ; 
Hanging above the dizzy precipice 
To cull the flowers that bloom upon the brink, 
That, for a single hour, they may commingle 
Their beauty with her own in others' eyes ; 
Bridging, amid the tempest's roar and rack. 
The sea with the resplendent arch of heaven ; 
Resolving the Crusades into a heart-beat ! 

So, to the bard, a man, in middle life, 

In whom destruction as a principle 

Swirls in a vast and all-involving vortex, — 

In whom the struggle for existence is 

Intensified, and every impulse shaped 

And sharpened to an instrument of death, — 

The wars of the Crusades are wars in fact. 

In which, from first to last, the direst scenes, 

Of rapine, pillage, strife, and slaughter, that 

Occurred in horrible reality. 

Are reen acted in ideal forms. 

Again, the voice of the crazed hermit, Peter, 

In thunder tones calls him to arms and action ; 

Again, the locust-hordes of unrestrained, 

Undisiplined, and headstrong soldiery 

Are massacred in mobs in Hungary ; 



102 THE CRUSADES IN SONG, 

Again, Constantinople, Marra, Nice, 

Are girt about, besieged, and sacked ; 

Again, gaunt famine gnaws at Antioch ; 

Again, the field of Doryleum is 

Concealed beneath the bodies of the slain ; 

Again, Edessa, Sidon, Ascalon, 

Tyre, Acre, Jaffa, Damietta, and 

The leprous Ramleh are inscribed in blood 

Within the tome of immortality ; 

Again, Jerusalem is stormed and sacked. 

And, — horror of all horrors of the wars ! — 

The Tomb of Christ, the sacred symbol of 

Goodwill to all mankind, and peace on earth, 

Submerged within a sea of human blood ; 

And so on to the end, until above 

The Cross, the Crescent of Muhammad gleams 

Within the Holy Cit}'- as to-day ! 

O mighty, murderous, and monstrous man ! 

Forgetting father, mother, wife, and child, — 

Dissevering himself from all mankind. 

And, ranging with th5 savage beasts of prey, 

Exceeding them in greed and wanton slaughter ! 

Exultant only as the life-blood flows. 

And the o'erthrown are heaped up in his sight ; 

His pride increased and gratified in a 

Crude calculation that assumes to tell 

The time the blood shed in the Holy Wars 

Would feed the torrent of Niagara ; 

And his self immortality assured 

In an appalling pile of human heads 

Rising above the Pyramids of Egypt ! 

So, to the poet, a good wife and mother. 

In whom the principle of j^reservation 

Engrosses every function of the body, — 

In whom — as in the symbol myth of old — 

The Ark of Life rides out the Flood of Death, — 

The Middle Ages represent the plague 



THE CRUSADES IN SONG. 103 

Prevailing in her home and vicinage ; 

The Holy Land, a silent, curtained room, 

In which she comes and goes and has her being, 

A ministering angel in disguise ; 

The Franks and Turks, the hosts of life and death 

Antagonistic on the bed before her ; 

And the redemption of the Holy Tomb, 

The restoration of the sick to health. 

A ministering angel, aye, in fact ! 

Oblivious to the producing cause 

To the effect before her, in her charge ; 

Blind to all sights, save sorrow and its soothing ; 

Deaf to all sounds, save suff'ring and salvation ; 

Encompassing the Holy Wars within 

The sleepless nights she watched upon her knees 

Beside a cot on which a sick son lay 

In an uncertain light — Holy Mother ! 

Is it the dawning of the day of life. 

Or the dusk deep'ning of the night of death ? 

So, to the bard, an old and feeble man. 

Casting a backward look o'er his long life, 

And, setting side by side the ends achieved 

In manhood, and the hopes and dreams of youth, 

Contrasting them in maudlin misery, — 

The Middle Ages are his middle life ; 

The Holy Land, the field in which he ploughed ; 

The Franks and Turks, successes and reverses ; 

The Holy Tomb, the whited sepulchre. 

Himself, in the extremities of age ! 

It is the palsied grandsire, looking back 

O'er the long line of little grassy mounds 

That mark the graves of buried hopes, until, 

At last, behold ! he sees himself aghast 

Upon the very crumbling brink-edge of 

A fathomless abyss oped to receive hini — 

The Holy Wars and all the world contains, 

A miserable mask and mockery ! 



104 THE CRUSADES IN SONG. 

While, to the bard, an old and feeble woman, 

Sitting within the warmest chimney-nook. 

Rocking a sleeping babe within a cradle, 

And crooning o'er the while a simple song 

She learned in childhood from her own great 

gran dame — 
Perchance, while slumb'ring as the babe before 

her, — 
The Middle Ages are her children and 
Her children's children thrice removed from her ; 
The soldiers of the Cross and of the Crescent, 
The sons and daughters of her blood and issue 
And those of alien intermarried with them ; 
And, happily, the Holy Sepulchre, 
The cradle with the blessed image of 
The Infant Jesus at her feet — the Hope 
Of an Eternal Life in flesh and blood ! 

And so to poets, in whom age and sex 

Are made subordinate, in whole or part, 

To an engrossing vice or virtue, or 

To an absorbing love or loathing, or 

To any all-involving want or aim, — 

The Holy Wars become a vehicle 

As variable as the sentiments 

To be conveyed — a song-chamgeleon 

Assuming its surrounding hue^. and colors, 

Till indistinguishable from the leaves 

And twigs it lives among a mimic life. 

Take Tasso, Ariosto, and Bajardo, 
Among Italian poets, for example : 
Cringing and fawning at the feet of power, 
Vain-glorious in their patriotic strains. 
Lax in their morals, in religion light, 
And, howsoe'er mellifluous in song, 
As false as false can be in fiction when 
It is not formulated first by fact, — 



THE CAMEL DRIVER AT CARTHAGE. 105 

The Holy Wars in their poetic tomes 
Are an eversion of their several selves 
Of infinitely greater accuracy 
Than an exhibit of their seeming subject. 

In fine and fact, the Holy Wars in Song 
Are but the mask before the poet's face. 



THE CAMEL DRIVER AT CARTHAGE. 



Loquitur — An Arab Camel Driver, from Timbuctoo. 



Aye, Carthage stood here where I stand; and when 
I'm dead and gone, 

How much the better's Carthage than poor Hassan 
All's son ? — 

Life shall have been the same to both, a certain, trou- 
bled span. 

And death a mouldering back to earth, where both of 
us began ! 

For what is this unsightly waste of shards and broken 

stones, 
But Carthage rotting in the sun, and bared unto the 

bones ? — 
And these poor Arabs in their caves,— dark, damp, 

low-arched, and narrow. 
Beneath Queen Dido's palace wails, — but maggots in 

the marrow ? 

But, as for that, what is the great, revolving globe be- 
neath, 

But a still greater Carthage in a deeper dust of 
death ! — 

N 



106 THE CAMEL DRIVER AT CARTHAGE. 

Whereon the greatest wealth of life at any time 

amassed 
Were but a camel's taste of grass within Sahara's 

waste ! 

Or rich or poor, or great or small, or ancient Hannibal, 
Or modern Hassan All's son, this is the end of all ! — 
I thank thee, ruined Carthage, for the lesson I have 

got, 
To be content with — aye, to bless the camel driver's 

lot! 



Come ! come ! companion of my life upon Sahara's 

sand. 
Earth knows no happier home than ours, in her most 

favored land ; 
With the dear dust beneath our feet, a cloudless sky 

o'erhead, 
We are the world of life alone, and all besides, the 

dead ! 

Come ! come ! the rarer water flows, the dearer every 
drop ; 

Come ! come ! the wearier the way, the sweeter every 
stop ; 

Come ! come ! without the trials that forever us pur- 
sue, 

There were no diamonds in the dust 'twixt here and 
Timbuctoo ! 



Ah, Timbuctoo ! how quick thy name, to make my 

heart rejoice ! 
As if I heard in it afar the fond, familiar voice 
Of her, the loadstar of my life, by Allah's mercy given, 
To lead me o'er Sahara's sands, as if I were in 

Heaven ! 



JOHN CHINAMAN. 107 



JOHN CHINAMAN. 



Loquitur — A Chinese Washerman, in California, contem- 
plating the civilizations of the Eastern and Western Worlds, 
and contrasting the achievements of John Chinaman with 
those of John Bull and Beothee Jonathan. 



Four hundred millions of mankind — one-third of all 
the souls, 

Embodied in the human form, between the planet's 
poles ! — 

I aggregate ; and yet, in the great universal plan, 

Beyond my bourne, what am I but a pig-tailed wash- 
erman ! 



Strung on a string, like beads, my heads, bestowed by 
the Creator, 

Would put a girdle round about the globe at the equa- 
tor; 

And yet from out this world of brains, a thought has 
never been 

Evolved and wrought into a good and practical ma- 
chine ! 



My aggregated height extends beyond the midnight 
moon ; 

And yet I've never gone aloft a foot in a balloon ; 

And with eight hundred million eyes — up-squinting 
eyes at that — 

I've never seen in space, perhaps, as much as a tom- 
cat ! 



108 JOHN CHINAMAN. 

My aggregated blood would make a sea within my 

bones, 
In which the largest ship could sail, or sink to Davy 

Jones, 
And yet I've never built a boat more useful than a 

junk — 
A sort of sloop stove-up astern — a schooner on a 

drunk ! 

My aggregated heart would hold the great symbolic 
dome 

That ris33 like a mighty moon above the walls of 
Rome ; 

And yet I've never sung a song the world repeats for- 
ever, 

Nor made a creed to civilize a savage unbeliever ! 

My aggregated breath would make about as big a bliz- 
zard 

As that foretold by Wiggins, the Canadian weather- 
wizard ; 

And yet with all my strength of lungs, I do not blow 
a bubble 

To aid the progress of the world, or save mankind 
from trouble. 



I am a mighty multitude — of tadpoles in a puddle, 
With the tadpolean tendency about the rim to huddle ; 
Four hundred million half-evolved or stunted polli- 

wogs 
That can't exchange their gills for lungs and turn to 

toads and frogs ! 

Aye, aye, the tadpole, with its tail and undeveloped 

nature, 
Well typifies John Chinaman in every striking feature ; 



JOHN CHINAMAN. 109 

As if, on a gigantic scale, in his prolonged submersion, 
To prove the truth of Darwin's law about the type's 
reversion. 

Four hundred million tadpoles, in an oriental bog, 
Kowtowing to the Tatar, like a fossilized King Log ; 
Or, wriggling from the crowded pool, to 'Frisco or New 

York, 
To find a tyrant in the Times as fatal as King Stork ! 

True, I've invented powder; but I've never had the 

knack, or 
Appreciation of its worth, to make more than a 

cracker ; 
Which, when contrasted with the work with it by 

others wrought. 
Is as a herring on a hook to all the rest uncaught ! 

And so, I've practised printing, in a crude way, for an 
age. 

And never have advanced beyond the simplest stamp- 
ing stage ; 

Which, when contrasted with the work with it by 
others done, 

Is as a burning tallow-dip unto the noonday sun! 

So, I have known the needle for a thousand years or 

more, 
And never used it save in sight of a familiar shore ! — 
For all the good it's been to me, or others of mankind, 
I might as well have trusted to a kite-tail in the wind ! 

And so, before all others, I discovered, it would seem, 
That water super-heated is converted into steam ; 
And yet I've never gone beyond my childhood's bath- 
tub splashing. 
To use hot water anyway except to do my washing ! 



110 LONDON. 

In fine, in this electric age, I am so far behind 

The foremost of the fighters in the battle of mankind, 

I must pronounce myself, in truth, a most stupendous 

sham — 
Not worth, in the grand march of Man, a continental 

damn I 



IN NORWAY. 



The conscious brain conceiving only one 

Thing at a time, it follows necessar'ly 

A little thing may take precedence of 

And occupy the mind to the exclusion 

Of all the known and unknown world besides. 

" The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens," 

( As Coleridge styles the questionable poem, ) 

With an afirontery the most provoking. 

Unbidden comes into the private chamber 

Of my imagination, locks the door, 

And takes a cozy chair before the fire. 

And croaks, " To Noroway ! " " To Noroway ! " 

With the persistency of Poe's weird raven. 

When I would fain admit into my sanctum 

The mighty Myth-men of the North, whose names 

Send a courageous quiver through my veins, 

And heave my breast with a heroic sigh I 



LONDON. 



Among the cities of the present age. 
As the Atlantosaurus of the past 
Among the monsters of the airy earth, 
Preeminent, predominant, prodigious ! 



THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS. Ill 



THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS.' 



As, in the goodly body of a man, 

There is a part peculiarly exempt 

From the destructive wear and tear of work, 

And the inevitable waste of passion ; 

And yet, in which corruption of the flesh 

Is most engendered and most active in 

Developing disease, decay, and death ; 

Albeit, in the midst of other parts 

The most important in preserving life — 

The heart, belike, the vital pendulum, 

Or the bone-boxed cerebrum, wisdom's seat. 

So, in the towns and cities of mankind, 

There is a part peculiarly exempt 

From the destructive wear and tear of work, 

And the inevitable waste of war ; 

And yet, in which corruption of the mind 

Is most engendered and most active in 

Developing disorder, lawlessness. 

And crime, in each and every of its forms, 

From an assault upon a single man 

To an o'erturning of a settled state ; 

Albeit, haply, in the shadow of 

A hospital, endowed with untold wealth, 

To minister unto the sick and sore. 

And save the wreckage of mankind in body ; 

Or a cathedral, founded in the earth 

And spired in heaven, to minister, as well. 

Unto the hopeless, faint, and broken-hearted, 

And save the wrecl^age of mankind in spirit. 

And so, in the four quarters of the globe. 
As in the goodly body of a man, 



112 THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS. 

And in the towns and cities of mankind, 

There is a part — the thousand isles between 

The Indian and the Pacific oceans, 

Malayan stocked — peculiarly exempt 

From the destructive wear and tear of work 

In order to maintain a livelihood — 

A feast provided for the meanest man, 

And set within his reach, the like of which, 

With all his wealth, a Roman emperor 

Ne'er placed upon the board before his guests — 

The durian, belike, and mangosteen ; 

And equally exempt from the typhoons 

That swirl o'erwhelming in the seas surrounding ; 

And yet, in which the forces of destruction, 

Involved within the body and the mind, 

Are most intense, engrossing, and o'erwhelming : 

It is the land of lands, of robbery ; 

It is the sea of seas, of piracy ; 

It is the land and sea of butchery ; 

The savage greed of the inhabitants 

Appeased not till the bodies of the slain 

Are torn and mangled in their beastly jaws. 

And mingled with their monstrous flesh and blood ! 

Albeit, in the sight of the fair flag 

Of England, Holland, the. United States, 

Or other of the great -enlightened league, 

Combined for the protection of mankind 

Against the very evils here engendered 

As an inherent and eternal right ! 

And in the sound, as well, of the sweet bell 

Of a society of holy men, 

Who, in the name of Buddha or of Christ, 

Seek to attain entire the end through love, 

Which, only in a measure, the strong hand 

Of government can bring about through war. 

Methinks, in fine, that as to man, the part 
Most prone in him to breed disease and death, — 



VANDAIi AND ANDALUSIA. . 118 

And as to the great city of New York, 

The dread Five Points, or to the greater London, 

The Seven Dials, so, unto the world 

At large, the Malay Archipelago, 

The Islaiids of the South Sea Cannibals ! 



^"The Malaj^o-Polynesian races are pogsessed of an almost 
incredible degree of savagery and bloodthirstiness. They are 
the cannibals par eminence, not through want of food but 
through the peculiar hardness of their character. Cannibalism 
is practised not only among the inhabitants of the South Sea 
islands, but even among several of the civilized races of the 
west, such as the Bataks of Sumatra, who have produced a 
written literature, and who have cannibal rites in certain cases 
even prescribed by law." — G. A. F. Van Bhyn. 



GREECE. 



An epoch in the evolution of 

The most evolved organic form of earth — 

The ultimate attained by mortal man 

Within the comjjass of the human hide : 

In beauty, valor, virtue, wisdom, worth, — 

In oratory, wit, philosophy, — 

In sculpture, music, painting, poesy, — 

Ere metamorphosing, by change and chance. 

Into a super-self of steel and steam — 

A super-human monster — a Machine ! 



VANDAL AND ANDALUSIA. 



What mumbling masks of meaning are our words ! 
The Vandal is the hurricane incarnate 
That leaves the world in chaos in its track ; 
While [V] Andalusia is — this Paradise! 
O 



114 A PRINCESS OF THE ORIENT. 



A PRINCESS OF THE ORIENT. 



Loquitur — The Princess , of 



A princess ! How I loathe the word ! as if, within 

the sound, 
A serpent, with constricting folds, my limbs and body 

bound, 
Chilling the blood within my heart, envenoming my 

sighs. 
While hissing hate and darting death within my ears 

and eyes ! 

A princess ! Aye, a pyramid, like the stupendous pile 
That symbolizes fire in stone, upon the banks of 

Nile,— 
An apex in the social sky, with diamonds all aglow, 
A base, as wide as woman, built upon a world of woe ! 

My father was of royal blood, but one step from the 

throne. 
Till found in a depleted ditch, beneath a murderous 

stone ; 
And she that bare me in her womb, a Georgian slave 

by birth, 
Ennobled by the nuptial knot — to curse with me the 

earth ! 

A babe — Not like the infant bee, destined to be a 
queen. 

Fed full and fondly with the sweets ten thousand min- 
ions glean ; 



A PRINCESS OF THE ORIENT. 115 

But stinted by a Nubian nurse, with lank and flabby 

dugs, 
And stunted by a Mine maid, with hemp and poppy 

drugs. 

A child — Within the harem's walls, a prisoner con- 
fined, — 

The latitude allowed my limbs, the measure of my 
mind ; 

A whitened weed within a cave, amassing mould and 
smut ; 

A worm within the hardened shell of a decaying nut ! 

A bride — Did ever mottled moth emerge from its coc- 
coon 

To meet its mate in the soft light of the refulgent 
moon, 

With greater change and greater joy, than I to greet 
my lord — 

To find myself the bestial slave of one my soul ab- 
horred ! 

A wife — Is there among the woes that human life 
beset — 

Is there a scab, a scar, or sore, that crime and chance 
beget, 

More overwhelming in its weight, and no escape al- 
lows, 

Than to a woman the embrace of a disgusting spouse ! 



A mother — Aye, the mother of a babe I hoped to be 

The recompense for all the woes the world had heaped 
on me ; 

But like his sire Oh, God forgive the heart I can- 
not hide ! 

I never felt a greater joy than when my baby died ! 



116 THE' EASTERN HEMISPHERE. 

A widow— Aye, there is but one conclusion to a life 

Of riotous debauchery, in unremitting strife 

With Nature's laws, no monarch's moan or mandate 

can suspend, — 
Decay, disease, a maddened brain, and an untimely 

end ! 

A woman — Not yet twenty -two, and yet, within that 

span. 
Tortured with all that ever tried the woman-half of 

man, 
From the most menial JSthiop, that groveled in the 

ground, 
To the most noble princess — whom the social serpent 

bound ! 

A woman — One whom Time and Space have organized 

for naught : 
To waste away from day to day, henceforth, and then 

to rot — 
Without a future in the flesh in any other form 
Than in the bloated segments of the blind sepulchral 

worm ! ^ 

Allah ! I would rather be the basest of the base, 
-So be it I might live and love incarnate with a race, 
Than gleam another instant in this artificial glare, 
A Princess of the Orient, incorporate Despair ! 



^ Cf., the sentiment of Antigone, on dying without issue. 



THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE. 



The Old World — Nay, to me, at least, the New 
So '■ all things vary from a selfish view. ■ 



THE WANDERING' JEW. 



THE WANDERING JEW. 



lit 



Loquitur^- A Jewish Rabbi on Mount Olivet. 



I Stand upon 'Mount Olivet, to feel, as ne'er before, 
Jehovah's curse on Israel in its appalling power ! — 
The curse that drave my fathers hence and ceased not 

to pursue, 
Until each outcast felt himself, as I — The Wandering 

Jew. 

For what behold I from this height? The fields my 

fathers tilled, 
And to transmit them to their sons, their dearest 

heart's-blood spilled, — 
This weather- washed and worn-out waste ! this stretch 

of ghastly stones ! — 
Like a Wolf-haunted graveyard strewn with dead men's 

bleaching bones ! 

And there, the City of the Jews, where, from a moun- 
tain base. 

The Temple of Jehovah rose to sanctify the place ; — 

Where, noAV, the Garden Serpent lives within the fanes 
of foes. 

And Israel is driven forth with banished Adam's woes! 

Where, now, at the closed gate, on guard, the Angel of 

the Lord 
Stands with the baleful blade of old, a double-edged 

sword — 
The Christian and the Saracen in an incessant jar. 
Changing with strife the Place of Peace into the Place 
- of War! 



118 THE GERMAN. 

mockery of mockeries, of this illusive earth ! 

The sacred city of my sires, the womb-land of my 

birth, — 
This donjon-keep upon a rock, where self-imprisoned 

hosts, 
In earnest of eternal life, make one another ghosts ! 

1 turn in anguish from the scene ; and lo f within my 

gaze, 
The waters of the Jordan flow, as in the olden days ! 
symbol stream of Israel ! descended from the skies, 
And flowing ever thus unto the gates of Paradise ! . . . . 

Ah, no ! I see the shimmer of a shrinking, sunken sea. 
As well as Jordan's pearly flood, a symbol unto me I — 
It is the end of Israel ! It is — I gasp for breath ! — 
It is the end of Israel in bitterness and death ! 

woe ! to see my fathers' fields, a waste in foemen's 
hands I 

O woe I to see my fathers' shrines, the spoils of war- 
ring bands f 

woe ! to see the Stream of Life its course accursed 
pursue 

Into the bitter Sea of Death I woe ! the Wandering 
Jew I 



THE GERMAN. 



A mongrel cross between the Hun and Goth : 
The Hun, the mother, captive ta'en in war, 
Out-cropping in her dark-skinned, lozenge-headed, 
Up-squinting eyed, and music-loving daughters ; 
The Goth, the father, grim at work and war. 
Transmitting to his sons his language, laws. 
Lore, love of arms, round head, and mystic brain. 



THE RIDDLE OF TSE SPHINX, ll^ 



THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX, 



Loquitur — A Donkey-Driver, from Cairo. 



I am a donkey-driver, Sphinx. Now, tell me, what art 

thou? — 
The Watch-dog of the Pyramids ? — Or, lacking a 

bow-wow, 
The Demon of the Desert, with a sullen flow of bile, 
Contemplating the conquest of the Valley of the 

Nile? 

Or, haply, good old Mother Earth, time-touched and 

weather-worn, 
With still the special vanity in every woman born, 
Craning as high as possible thy wrinkled neck forever, 
To see thyself reflected in the mirror of the river ? 

I mock thee, Sphinx! — And pause, in awe, to stare 

into the e5^es. 

That, silently and steadily, like planets in the skies, 

Have seen the sultans of the earth, the sages, and the 

saints, 
The sculptor with his chisel, and the limner with his 

paints, — 

Come and depart in little clouds of dust within the 

track 
Of a stupendous caravan, extending back, back, back. 
Into the dusk and darkness of the world's primaeval 

waste, 
The lampless and unlettered, the illimitable past ! 



120 MILITARY GERMANY. . 

The eyes of stone, that with the self-same calm com- 
placency, 

Now look out and behold, among the sons of ^Egypt, 
me ! — 

In the brief instant of my life, the well- or ill-spent 

span, 
In which this cloud of desert dust assumes the shape 
of Man ! 

And yet since thou, that art, like me, made of the 
desert dust. 

Canst live through ,all the ages an insensible stone bust, 

Why' may not I immortal be, and never come to 
. naught. 

As sentient shape and substance, or as subtler, skull- 
less Thought ? 

As subtler, skull-less Thought, like that imparted unto 

thee, 
That makes thee an Egyptian and an image unto 

me — 
A second self in solid stone — a souvenir through time, 
To show me — and my donkey — what I was when in 

my prime ! 

Come, come, my donkey! swell thyself! until thy 

sweenied hide 
Conform to the proportions of the Sj^hinx that will 

thee ride. 
When I What ! wilt begin to bray, when I before 

thee pass ? 
Thou indurated ingrate ! thou impenetrable ass ! 



MILITAR Y GERMANY. 



A porcupine — bristling with bayonets. 

t 



DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 121 



DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 



The descent -was made on Wednesday, the 7th day of Jan- 
uary, 1885, on the standard-gauge trans- Andean railroad of Pe- 
ru, ( called El Ferro Caril del Callao, Lima y Oroya, ) from its 
present mountain terminus, Chicla, at an elevation of 12,220 
feet aboA'e the level of the sea, to San Bartolome, at an eleva- 
tion of 4949 feet — a distance of 39 English miles, at an aver- 
age gradient of 186} feet to the mile : the minimum being zero 
for a few rods at the nine V's, or switchbacks, and the maxi- 
mum 264 feet to the mile. The summit tunnel of this railroad, 
already cut for the passage of the workmen, is at an elevation 
of 15,722 feet, which, I believe, is the highest point attained by 
any railroad on the globe. The construction of the road so far 
has cost the great sum of tAventy-eight millions of American 
money ; and according to the reported contract, recently [1885] 
awarded by the government of Peru to Grace & Company, of 
Ne^v York and Lima, a further sum of thirty millions will be 
expended for its completion over the great moimtain chain to 
one of the navigable tributaries of the Amazon in the heavily 
wooded and marvelously i)roductive valley beyond. 

From Chicla to San Bartolome, the railroad is constructed 
along the precipitous walls of the great quebrada, barranca, 
break, or cafion of the river Eimac ; and among the notewor- 
thy features of the line are tunnels connected by bridges ; in 
two places, two parallel tiHinels, one directly over the other ; 
in several places, three and four lines above one another ; the 
highest railway bridge in the world, ( unless the Kinzua bridge 
in Pennsylvania exceeds it ; ) and the marvel of all marvels in 
the Avorld of railroad engineering, a ftone arch bridge within 
a tunnel over a cavernous abyss found in the heart of one of 
the largest masses of rock pierced in that part of the caiion 
called El Infiernillo, or the I,ittle Hell. 

Compared with a similar hand-car descent of the foot-hills 
of the Himalayas, from Darjlling, at an elevation of approxi- 
mately 8000 feet, to Guyabara, at an elevation of 4000, the de- 
scent of the Andes is infinitely more thrilling and pleasurable 
on account of the extreme narrowness and ruggedness of the 
canon traversed, the myriad of weird and ghastly scenes pre- 
sented, and the bewildering beauty of a rushing, roaring, milk- 

P 



122 .DO.WN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 

white river passing from rapid to cataract and from cataract to 
seething caldron without intermission for 39 miles ! — to say 
nothing of the greater danger, whirrring and whizzing ever, 
except in the tunnels and a fe^y cuttings and fillings, on the 
brink of a precipice, over which the breaking of a wheel, a 
little stone on the track, or the unexpected factor of the thous- 
and and one every-day accidents, would hurl the rider into 
eternity. 



Clear and cold the ambient aether, 
In the first hours of the morning, 
In the cheerless town of Chicla, 
Near the snow-line of the Andes, 
In the country of the Incas, 
Conquered by the steel-clad Spaniards 
Headed by the bold Pizarro. 

Sharp the clink and clear the clangor 
Of the wheels and tracks impinging, 
As the roadmen, raw-hide sandaled. 
Take the hand-car from a terrace 
And adjust it on the twin rails 
Of the wonder way of iron 
Winding up and down the Andes, 
In the grim and ghastly canon 
Cut and fashioned by the Rimac ^ 
In its rushing from the snow-line 
Of the mighty Cordilleras 
To the shore-line of the ocean. 
The Pacific, or the South Sea. 

Oiled the axles, laid the cushions, 
" Ready ! " cries the sturdy master,^ 
Gloved and muffled in a great coat. 
With his right hand on the brake-bar, 
And his left to me extended. 
Seated by the burly master — 
Oh, will not my head cease aching ! 
And my heart its hurried beating ! 



DOWN THE; ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 123 

And rhy breast its panting, panting, 

Like a wounded pigeon taken 

'Twixt the sportsman's thumb and finger! 

No ; it is not fear affects me, 

But the Demon of Surroche,* 

In the rare and radiant aether, 

Near the snow-line of the Andes — 

On the confines of the kingdom i 

Mortal beast nor bird ne'er enters, 

Nor approaches, save the llama, 

Half and half a goat and camel, 

Clinging to the cailon's brink-edge. 

And the condor, king of vultures, 

Soaring o'er the lagging llama, 

Waiting for the first of missteps 

To provide him with a mawfull 

In the dark depth of the canon. 

Round the wheels go, fast and faster ! 

Cold the blast comes, strong and stronger ! 

O'er my shoulders bending forward, 

Parted streams m}^ grizzled whiskers ; 

From my lashes, half-closed, quiv'ring, 

Flit in spray diffusive tear-drops. 

Ho ! was ever race more rapid ! 

On the swiftest of toboggans — 

On the fleetest of the ice-boats ! 

Or more thrilling, weird, and eldritch ! 

On the back of phantom charger — 

On the shoulders of the devil. 

By the short-cut of a crater. 

Dashing from the world of sunshine 

Into that of sin and sulphur ! 

Round the wheels go, fast and faster ! 
Rattling, roaring, rumbling, rasping, 
Scirring, scouring, skimming, scorching — 
Circled now and then with fire-streaks 



124 DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR, 

Streaming from the closing brake-blocks 

Over bridges, light and airy ; 

Thorough tunnels, dark as dungeons ; 

Now, within a ragged cutting ; i 

Now, adown a land-slide filling; 

Now, along a dizzy brink-edge, 

Swinging, swaying, reeling, rocking. 

As if vacillating, whether 

To continue on the twin tracks. 

Or forsake them — God have mercy ! 

Glancing eagerly around me — • 
Gneiss and porphyry and greenstone, 
Shale and marble, coal and granite. 
Yellow streaks of lead and silver, 
Passing quickly in succession, 
Interblending form and color 
In a vast and vague mosaic — ■ 
In a vision to a dreamer 
Lapped and folded in a silken 
Quilt of divers hues and shapings. 

Glancing eagerly above me — 

Cliffs and crags and peaks confounding 

In their vastness and confusion 

Metaphoric nomenclature — 

Castles, battlemented towers, 

Steeples, cyclopean ruins, — 

Baalbec, Stonehenge, Karnak, Memphis, 

In a circumvolving chaos ! 

Snowy patches in the sunshine 

Dazzling in their lustrous whiteness ; 

And above them in the blue sky, 

Lo ! the moon, 'twixt half and gibbous. 

Like a jelh^-fish careening 

In the azure of the ocean ! 

Glancing eagerly beneath me — 
Gulch, ravine, barranca, caiion. 



DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 125 

Gorge, quebrada, gap, and crevice. 
In whose darkened depths descending, 
Lo ! the snow-born river Rimac ! 
Ha! the rushing, roaring Rimac, 
Like a herd of milk-white horses 
Plunging madly down the canon — 
Manes and tails and forelocks streaming, 
Hoofs against the rocks resounding. 
Nostrils streaming, eyeballs gleaming, 
Flakes of froth around them flying ! 
Ha! a herd of maddened horses 
Racing Avith the whirring hand-car — 
With the whizzing, whistling hand-car, 
From the snow-line of the Andes 
To the shore-line of the ocean ! 

Stop ! Responsive to the brake-bar 

In the right hand of the master^ 

Lo ! the wheels have ceased their motion 

Just midway 'twixt hell and heaven ! 

Where the mountain walls contracting 

Form a narrow gorge compounding 

The sublime, the weird, and awful; 

Where the railroad robs the river 

Of the right of way for ages 

And diverts it through a tunnel 

And adown a rugged stairway 

To a dark, profound quebrada, 

Over which an iron cobweb 

Stretches from opposing tunnels, 

Whence the steaming locomotive 

Issues on the airy fabric 

And retreats into the darkness, 

Like a monstrous hairy spider 

In a corner of the Andes, 

In pursuit of moths and millers 

In the flitting clouds and shadows ; 

Where a sheer stupendous column 



126 DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 

With abutting curving strata 
Seem a pier and arch in ruin 
Of a viaduct constructed 
By the Titans of the old tales, 
By the Brobdingnags of modern. 

Seated once more in the hand-car ; 

Round the wheels go, fast and faster; 

Cold the blast comes, strong and stronger ; 

Whirling, whirring, whizzing, whistling, 

From the shadow into sunlight, 

From the sunlight into shadow, 

Racing with the river Rimac! — 

What a wondrous thing of beauty 

Falling water in the chaos 

Of a myriad of motions — 

Interchanging form and color — 

Interbl ending light and shadow — 

Intermingling the observer 

With the falling in the compound, 

Till behold ! the twain a union — 

Falling water and observer — 

Like long-severed man and woman 

In the gloaming come together. 

This, the town of San Mateo 

Sacked and burned by the Chilenos — 

What a ghastly exposition, 

In this canon of the Andes, 

Of the woe and waste of warfare F 

That, upon yon granite boulder — 

That the skull of a Chileno 

Slaughtered by a Cholo woman 

Fleeing frenzied with her first-born 

Snatched from out a burning cottage, 

Blackened, charred, a child of ashes! 

Those, yon dangling frayed-out rope-ends- 
Those, the means by which suspended 



DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 127 

O'er the precipice, the workmen 
Cut a foot-hold in the sheer wall — 
Cut a foot-hold, then a platform, 
For the tunnels, slopes, and sidings 
Of this wondrous mountain railway ! — 
Heroes they, those workmen swinging 
In the air a hundred fathoms 
From the ragged cliflf above them 
And the surging sea beneath them, — 
Aye, as well as those ennobled 
In the warring of the nations 
And the storming of the oceans ! 

This, the bridge of Chaupichaca; 

This, the town of Matucana ; 

This, the great bridge of Verrtigas — 

Highest of the bridges spanning 

Gorge and river in the whole world ! — 

Every rivet representing 

One that died here in its buildino; — 

Died of the Oroya fever, 

Deadliest of intermittents. 

Or the plague of warts, verrugas — 

Whence the name of bridge and river. 

Bridge and tunnel, cut and filling, 
Cut and filling, bridge and tunnel — 
See the flashing vajR of sunlight, 
In the midnight of the mountain. 
Upward borne along the bright tracks. 
Upward borne along the curved tracks. 
From the world beyond the cavern; 
Like the glances from the great eyes 
Of the demon of a nightmare, 
Faint at first, then growing brighter. 
As the fiend comes nearer, nearer. 
Till upon the sleeper's waking. 



128 DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 

Lo ! they pass into the sunshine 
Streaming through thfe parted curtains ! 

That commotion in the village — 
Thosfe in mask and garb fantastic, 
Dancing to "the piper's music, 
. Celebrate an ancient festa — 
Festa of the Kings, they call it. 
See the aprons of the women, 
Worn upon the left side only 
From the shoulder to the ankle — 
Worn, they say, as a memento 
Of the emj^ire of the Incas — 
Of their dead and buried fathers — 
They that built the terrace gardens 
Now in dreary waste and ruin 
On the mountain steeps above us, 
On the mountain steeps below us, 
Like the steps of the stone courses 
Of the Pyramids of Ghizeh — 
They that cut the water-channels 
In the granite, gneiss, and greenstone, 
From the snow-line of the Andes, 
To the level of their gardens, 
Changing, as if by enchantment, 
These bald wastes of mountain desert 
Into oases of plenty 
Teeming with a happy people — 
Oases of fruits and flowers 
Rivaling the hanging gardens 
Of the City of the Chaldee, 
Babylon, the old world's London — 
Rivaling the floating gardens 
Of the City of the Aztecs, 
Mexico, the new Avorld's Venice-^ 
Realizing unto millions 
All the wonders, wealth, and beauty 
Of the gardens feigned by fancy, 



DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. * 129 

From the Eden of the Hebrews 
To the Garden of Alcina. 

On, from one depth to another, 
Deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, 
Down the canon of the Rimac ; 
Curving now within a cutting 
Round the face of sheer headland 
With the ease and grace of motion 
Of the albatross exulting 
In the fury of a tempest, 
Pirouetting on a wing-tip 
In the spind-drift of a wave-crest ! 
Ha ! was ever speed compounded 
With such grace and joy of motion 
On the brink-edge of destruction ! 
Now zigzagging, like a dolphin, 
Swiftest of the ocean swimmers. 
Coursing with an iron steamer. 
Darting hither, darting thither. 
Disappearing, reappearing, 
As if teasing the great monster 
To forsake its life of labor 
And pursue it in its gambols ! 
Doubling now and passing thorough 
Tunnels one above the other ; 
Like a cunning rabbit, feeling 
On its flanks the greyhound's hot breath. 
Darting under first one fence-rail 
Then aback beneath another. 
Leaving its pursuer baffled ! 
Ha ! as I have left behind me 
The fell Demon of Surr&che, 
The dread monster of the Andes, 
In the guise of a grim savant. 
With a bell-glass and an air-pump, 
Sitting on the Cordilleras — 
Q 



130 DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 

He that clapped o'er me his bell-glass, 
Then with a spasmodic action, 
Pumped out half the air around me ; 
Ogling me through double lenses. 
And with scrutinizing tortious. 
While I panted, puffed, and stifled, 
While I passed from pain to torture, 
Bleeding from my ears and nostrils, 
Temples bursting like a bombshell. 
All the Andes on my breast-bone ! -r- 
Till I tooS: the whirring hand-car — ; 
Took the whizzing, whistling hand-car. 
And my leave of the grim savant, 
With his bell-glass and his air-pump. 
Sitting on the Cordilleras ! 

Five and thirty bridges passed o'er. 

Ten and thirty tunnels raced through. 

Nine and thirty miles of railroad 

Traversed in the whirring hand-car — 

Stop ! Responsive to the brake-bar 

In the right hand of the master, 

Lo ! the wheels have ceased their motion 

At San Bartol'me, a station, 

In the valley of the Rimac 

' Mong the foot-hills of the Andes, 

And my mad-cap ride is ended — 

In the sound of mirth and laughter. 

In the sight of pears and melons, 

In the scent of steaming dishes. 

In the touch of plate and platter, 

In the taste of a rare breakfast — 

Earth unto the earthy, after 

The celestial spirit's rapture 

In its flight adown the Andes, 

Like How opportune the object 

In my sight the while I want it ! — - 
Like yon meteor descending 



DOWN THE ANDES IN A HAND-CAR. 131 

In the sunshine and the shadow 
From the aether of the zenith 
To the earth of the horizon ! * 



^ The accent of the name of this mountain river is not on 
the final syllable, as placed by some, according to the Spanish 
rule of pronunciation with respect to words terminating in a 
consonant, but on the penultimate, as in its transmuted form 
Lima, by dropping the unaccented c, and making the usual 
change of r into I. The word is not Spanish, but Quichua ; 
and signifying He that speaks, or has spoken, was originally the 
name of a fiimous oracular deity enshrined in the ancient city 
whose extensive ruins are found to-day on the banks of the 
river near the village of La Magdalena. From the oracle, the 
name passed to the river ; and from the river, in the form of 
Lima, to the city founded by Pizarro and called by him La 
Ciudad de los Reyes, or the City of the Kings. 

^ Mr. William Ellis, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, to whom 
the writer takes great pleasure in acknowledging his obligations 
for one of the most pleasurable experiences of his varied life. 

^ The word soroche, surroche, or sirochi, ( as it is spelled vari- 
ously, ) applied in Peru to the distress or disease produced by 
breathing the rarified air of great altitudes, is a corrupted form 
of the word sirocco, applied to an intensely oppressive and 
smothering wind in the North of Africa and the South of Eu- 
rope — the brickfielder of the Mediterranean, as an Australian 
would say. So agonizing are the tortures of the Demon of the 
Andes to many persons, that the only enjoyment and memora- 
ble experience they have in making the ascent of the mountain 
is ( paradoxically, or after the manner of the Milesiarfs of pop- 
ular belief, ) in making the descent, and that as quickly as poss- 
ible. Mr. Galega, the English journalist, tells the story of a 
man who suffered so much on his arrival at Chicla that he paid 
the railroad company $1,500.00, to take him down on the loco- 
motive immediately to a point at which he could breathe in 
comfort. 

* The appearance of this fire-ball, shooting-star, aerolite, or 
whatsoever meteor it was in the shape and semblance of a 
globe of gleaming silver, occurred at one of the several stops 
made in the descent, and passed from the outer into the inner 
vision of the writer as a most felicitous symbol of speech to ex- 
press his rapid flight in a perfect glow of enthusiasm from the 
rare and radiant environment of Chicla to the every-day earth- 
ies of the earth of San Bartolome. 



132 HUMOR IN HOLLAND. 



HUMOR IN HOLLAND. 



No, no, my dear, because the Dutch live forty feet or 

more 
Beneath the surface of the sea, along a sunken shore, 
The Dutch girls are not mermaids, those anomalously 

odd fish 
Depicted by the poets as half woman and half codfish ! 

And since they are amphibious, in habitat at least, 

They're not web-footed and duck-billed, like the Aus- 
tralian beast-— 

Or-nith-o-rhyn-chus — Catch your breath, now, — par-a- 
dox-us, — so ! — 

That puzzled the zoologists some forty years ago ! 

And never having seen a hill save in reverse — a hole, 
I take it, a true Hollander, to save his very soul, 
Cannot imagine mountain peaks, of which he's heard 

and read, 
Without inverting all the world, or standing on his 

head! 

And never having seen the sea except above the plain. 
He can't conceive of cataracts descending to the 

main ! — 
And, for the very life of him, he can't become the 

wiser. 
And see a waterfall but in an upward spouting geyser ! 

And looking ever down into the hollow of his land, 
It is not very difiicult for us to understand, 



THE WORLD. 133 

How he should leave to all besides the love of flow'rs 

and fruit, 
And fall enraptured on his knees before a tulip root ! 

Indeed, my dear, since mortal mind, no matter what 

its bent. 
Is but a sentient photograph of its environment, 
We should not be surprised to find this truth down in 

the well, 
The Dutchman thinks he's going to Heaven, when on 

his way to hell ! 

Hence, what appears the best to us must seem to him 
the worst. 

And every blessed town he has, in consequence, ac- 
cursed ; — 

In truth, from infancy, without the least compunctious 
qualm. 

He never mentions one without a most emphatic dam ! 



THE WORLD. 



The world — a little love, success, or weal, 

Converts into an orb so beautiful, 

The savage sun looks down on it aglow 

With admiration and enthusiasm ; 

The timid moon creeps up at dusky eve 

To gaze on it in wonder and delight ; 

And all the shrinking, fearful stars afar 

Come out together to behold its splendor ! 

The world — a little hate, defeat, or woe, 

Converts into a putrifying carcase — 

A sick'ning stench unto the very snails, 

Withdrawing in their solitary cells. 

In soul-sequestered, stone-encased seclusion 



134 AT WATERLOO. 



AT WATERLOO. 



I do not say there were in fact, but that, to me, at 

least, 
It seems there were two Bonapartes — a man and 

monstrous beast ! 
The man, of woman born, to die, as you and I must 

do; 
The beast, ripped from the womb of war, to rot at 

Waterloo ! 

The man, in form, a Puss-in-Boots, to ladies in the hall, 
And to the soldiers in the field, the Little Corporal ; 
The beast, in form -men stood aghast, and stared, 

with bated breath, 
And saw not till the beast had passed, it bore the 

shape of Death ! 

The man, upon his little legs, scarce walking half a 

league, 
Without perspiring freely and complaining of fatigue ; 
The monster here, there, everywhere, coming or having 

passed. 
Indifferent to time and space as a cyclonic blast ! 

The man, perhaps, a day or two, at Madrid, Brussels, 

Rome, 
Vienna, Moscow, Jaffa, or Great Alexander's tomb ; 
The beast, for years, a pestilence, as fearful and as fell, 
Extending o'er three continents the horrors of a hell ! 

The man, perhaps, like you and I, partaking, thrice 

a day, 
Of meat and drink, and getting full, in a familiar way ; 



THE HUN. 135 

The monster ravaging the earth, to pity deaf and 
blind, 

Devouring with insatiate greed two millions of man- 
kind ! 

The man reposing now in dust, beneath a marble mass, 

As indistinguishable from a man as from an ass ; 

The monster rotting in this mound, a stench unto the 

^sky — 
As terrible a dragon as e'er feigned in fanta,sy ! 

Baugh ! baugh ! the British Lion, on this monumental 

mound, 
When a far better symbol of Old England could be 

found ! 
Instead of this, the King of Beasts, how came she not 

to forge 
The figure of her patron saint. The Dragon-slaying 

George ! 



CHINA. 

A pterodactyle with extended wings, 
O'ershadowing the mud of Middle Asia. 



In worshiping the dead and buried past, 
Bearing a world upon its brawny shoulders, 
An Atlas ever bowed down to the earth. 



THE HUN. 



A strange and eldritch figure jutting out 

From mediseval murkiness, like a 

Grim gargoyle from a ruined abbey wall. 



136 THE GOTH AND THE HUN. 



THE GOTH AND THE HUN. 



To me, in contemplation — when the outer world has 

sped, 
And that within is peopled with the spectres of the 

dead, — 
The mediaeval Goth and Hun, of the historic page, 
Assume strange shapes within the gloom of a departed 

age. 

Betimes, the Goth, of massive mould, with shaggy- 
beard and hair. 

Comes in the monstrous semblance of the huge spe- 
laean bear ; 

And the fierce Hun, fur-clad to face the northern win- 
ter's rigor, 

In the appalling guise of the ferocious sword-toothed 
tiger ! 

Anon, the rival monsters, in their savage search of 

food. 
Meet in terrific conflict in the wild primaeval wood ; 
The grim, gigantic Gothic bear, erect with short-sword 

claws. 
The Hunnic tiger in the air, with sabres in his jaws ! 

And lo ! just as they join in fight, by some phantasmal 

trick. 
The bear assumes the likeness of the mighty Alaric ! 
And the fierce tiger in the air, as lithe as willow-rod. 
Dread Attila, upon his steed, the savage Scourge of 

God ! 



IN THE CITY OF MEXICO. 137 



IN THE CITY OF MEXICO. 



It was the morning after I arrived 

In Mexico, ( a refuge in a marsh 

To savages some centuries ago, 

And now a city to their Christian sons 

Among a motley mob from every part 

Of Christendom, ) I wandered out alone 

And came, by chance, before the great Cathedral : 

A monstrous pile, embracing every style 

Of architecture known to Komans, Greeks, 

And Goths, and their barbaric ancestors 

Back to the troglodytes inhabiting. 

By turns with bears and wolves, the mountain 

caves, — 
A massive and misshapen pile, — among 
The tabernacles of God's foot-stool, as 
The megatherium among the beasts ! 

Caramba ! said I, ( as a trav'ler must 
Begin his sentences in Mexico, 
If he would have the flavor in his speech 
Of pulque, Popocatepetl, and 
The Lord alone knows what besides within 
The limits of the Country of the Cactus ! ) 
If, from the shrine, the worshiped god within 
May be inferred, God help the monstrous god 
That's here compounded of all climes and times ! — ■ 
When, tripping on the curb, as I approached, 
My eyes descended to a garden group 
Of broken columns, capitals, and plinths, 
Belonging to an ancient temple of 
The aborigines of Anahuac — 
Or Aztec, Toltec, or — no matter, here — 
R 



138 IN THE CITY OF MEXICO. 

Which stood upon the site of the Cathedral 

Till rased for its successor's building by 

Th' invading Christian Vandals from Old Spain ; 

And rested on a coiled and feathered snake 

Of sculptured stone, the Aztec Serpent-God, 

Upon the head of which a garland lay 

Of flowers freshly plucked, in token of 

This fact, that, though the temple be in ruin, 

And the religion of the savages 

Supplanted by the Christian for at least 

Three hundred years, still in the hearts 

Of the descendants of the savages. 

The worship lives that wrought in love and faith 

The Serpent-God and built for it the shrine ! 

I passed the idol every day for weeks ; 
And every day, I saw the Avithered crown 
Of yesterday replaced by one of fresh 
And fragrant flowers culled within the night ; 
And every day, I worshiped at that shrine — 
That simple, savage, sub-Cathedral shrine; 
For in it I beheld a symbol of 
My secret self and that of all mankind : 
Expressive of the fact of facts, inwrought 
Within our very bones and flesh and blood. 
That, kneel by day before what gods we Avill, 
And prate with pride of present purposes, 
And future aims achieved of fame and fortune. 
Still, in the night, when all is dark and still, 
And we are isolated from the world. 
We cull the fairest flowers of the mind 
And weave them into crowns, and with a sigh 
Of sadness from the bottom of the heart, 
Before the sun alarms us with its light. 
We lay them on our idols of the past. 

And from the savage shrine, I went into 
The civilized, and worshiped there as well. 



CAMOENS. 139 

And with a new-found comprehension of 

The idols crowned with flowers in my sight, 

That made the great Cathedral a Pantheon, 

The holiest of shrines, amassing in 

Its monstrous and misshapen elements. 

The shrines of all the idols of mankind, 

In their ascent from savage troglodytes, 

Barbaric hordes, Jews, Romans, Greeks, and Goths, 

To the Last Man, the Crown of God on All ! 



CA3I0ENS. 



Camoens ! Aye, it is enough, that, for all time, his 

name 
Has been inscribed among the first upon the roll of 

Fame ; 
Albeit, in the span between the cradle and the grave. 
He suffered all that may befall the worthy and the 

brave. 



Camoens ! Aye, it is enough his graven form should 

stand 
.Upon a marble monument, the fairest in the land ; 
Albeit, in Lisboa's bounds, and in the very street, 
Where, wandering in want and woe, he walked with 

weary feet. 



It is enough his glor}^ in the skies of Portugal, 
Should shine a sun among the stars, its light involving 

all; 
Albeit, while upon the earth, within a dungeon's gloom, 
He saw no more the sunshine than a maggot in a tomb. 



140 AT CYPRUS. 

It is enough the stranger, from a far and alien strand, 
" The Country of Camoens ! " hails the poet's native 

land ; 
Albeit, while the poet lived, he had of earth no more 
Than the poor wretch swept from a wreck to die upon 

the shore. 

There is a brazen balance in the universe of man, 

That, in the light or in the dark, do what he may or 
can, 

Gives weight for weight of weal and woe, of worth and 
its reward. 

To jeweled king and tinseled clown, to robed and rag- 
ged bard. 



AT ILIUM. 



Methinks, a bard should be both old and blind ■ 

An incarnation of experience 

And sight-subordinate imagination. 

Old Homer, Ossian, and the like, to me 

Are simply symbols of this secret sense — 

Avatars of the God of Poesy, 

Or Areteas' periodic visits. 



AT CYPRUS. 



The Isle of Venus ? No ! The Isle of Love 
Is compassed only by the boundless sea 
That whirls and tosses in its viewless waves 
This whelk, the mites upon it call the world. 



ON THE PACIFIC. 141 



ON THE PACIFIC. 



Hast ever wished to be above the world and worldlings 
base, 

A solitary, sentient star in circumambient space. 

That, like an eye and heart conjoined, thou mightest in 
midsky 

Survey the whole and swell in soul throughout in- 
finity ! 

Ah, many a time and oft thou hast; and wertthou now 

with me, 
A thousand miles or more from shore, wpon the great 

South Sea, 
Thou'dst find, belike, as I have found, thy wish in 

fact fulfilled. 
As if a god, with gracious nod, had in thy wishing 

willed. 

Thou'dst see the very universe resolved into a hue. 
The sky above, the sea below, an interblending blue, 
And feel thyself above the earth and from the flesh 

apart, V 

A sentient star, a conscious sphere, an interstellar 

heart ! 

Thou'dst know not north, south, east and west; 

thou'dst know not day and night; 
For space and time would cease to be in thy supernal 

sight ; 
Thou'dst know not mother, wife, and child, from any 

of mankind. 
For all must merge as they converge within a single 

mind. 



142 ON THE PACIFIC. 

Thou'dst be the very ultimate by contemplation 

wrought, 
The soul, dissevered from its cell, subsisting as a 

thought — 
A subtile, special mode of force, words can no more 

define, 
Than plummet sound this sea profound — the Energy 

Divine ! 



Thou'dst be, in short, that thing of thought, an insola- 

ted god 
From aught organic or evolved from out a common 

clod ; 
A thing of thought, whose only thought, I dare to say, 

a man. 
Would be to turn again and burn within a human 

brain ! 



Thou'dst be this god, this thing of thought, or sentient 

star no more, 
But rather, twice ten thousand times, a mortal man on 

shore. 
Among the vilest of the vile, so be it, thou might'st 

find 
Thy mortal mud in flesh and blood commingled with 

mankind ! 



And so, in solemn, sober truth, it seems to me the 

course 
Of Nature is a shifting 'twixt its matter and its force ; 
Earth Avould be heaven, heaven earth — the universal 

plan — 
The Man of Mud becoming God, and God becoming 

Man ! 



JAPAN AND THE JAPANESE. 143 



JAPAN AND THE JAPANESE. 



Japan, 
The fairest of the lands of the Far East ! 
As if a section of the coast of Asia 
Had been submerged in the Pacific Ocean 
Till cleansed of all its continental filth ; 
Then shattered by successive earthquakes, and • 
Upheaved by submarine volcanoes, till, 
Behold ! a thousand isles of -wondrous beauty ! 
Lapped in the loam of decomposing lava, 
Moist in the mist of the encircling sea. 
Bright in the sunshine of a genial clime, 
A thousand islands of as many shapes, 
A thousand islands of as many hues, 
A thousand gems in the Pacific Ocean ! — 
The British Isles of the Pacific Ocean ; 
In size and number in accordance Avith 
The greater sea contrasted with the less ! 

The Japanese, 
The noblest of mankind in the Far East ! 
As if the Mongol horde of Middle Asia 
Had been submerged, as well, iix the great sea, 
Till cleansed of all their continental filth ; 
Then shaken by the earthquakes into action, 
And lifted by the submarine volcanoes 
Into a higher and a nobler sphere ; 
And lo ! a wonder wrought, the like of which 
Has never yet been seen upon the earth ! 
A drop of Aryan blood, somehow conveyed 
Into the Mongol horde in Middle Asia, 
And saved in their submergence in the sea, 
Acts, like the little leaven in the lump. 
Of which the scriptures tell, and, in due time, 
Converts the Mongols of the continent 



144 TUNISIA. 

Into the Mongol-Aryans of Japan, 

The modern Japanese, the French of Asia ! — 

In stature, short ; belike, as much below 

The standard of their neighbors, the Coreans, 

As are the Gauls below that of the Germans ; 

As quick to quarrel on a point of honor, 

And as courageous to avenge a wrong. 

As, man for man, their numbers in brave France ; 

As courteous, polite, and affable, 

As their Parisian parallels ; and so, 

In all the arts of war and peace, as apt; 

In fine, so like the French, that, whilom, when 

Their guarded gates were opened to the world. 

And all the peoples who saw fit to enter. 

The English, Russians, Germans, Portuguese, 

Americans, Danes, Swedes, — it was the French 

With whom they mingled as their next of kin, 

And fashioned them in all the outward forms 

Of their new worldly life ! Aye, blood will tell ! 

And so, in brief, Japan may be defined, 
The British Isles of the Pacific Ocean, 
Stocked and ennobled by the French of Asia/ 



' Since penning the above, the writer has made his second 
tour of the world, and, from his special study of the races of 
mankind, has changed his opinion with respect to the ethno- 
logic affinities of the Japanese, and accounts for the affiliation 
of this remarkable people with the French on a different hy- 
pothesis ; but lest he change his mind again on the exceeding- 
ly complicated problem, before the publication of his thesis on 
the races of mankind, he will not venture to express a possible 
third opinion now. The high estimation, however, in which 
he holds the Japanese as an enlightened, indomitable, and pro- 
gressive people, is not subject to like variations. 



TUNISIA. 



A begging Bedouin in Frankish stocks. 

« 



FUJIYAMA. 145 



FUJIYAMA. 



Fuji, Fujiyama, or Fusiyama, is the highest mountain of 
Japan ; a volcanic cone — or extinct volcano, if you Avill — ri- 
sing 12,365 feet above the level of the sea. It is a very sym- 
metric snow-capped peak, with slightly concave flanks, and as 
picturesque, perhaps, as any single mountain of the globe. By 
the Japanese, who are a nation of artists as well as artisans, it 
is held in such estimation as to approximate veneration and 
worship. It appears in almost every ideal landscai:)e ; and min- 
iatures of it in partj^-colored stones are favorite household and 
garden ornaments. 



Hail ! Fujiyama, peerless peak of picturesque Ja- 
pan ! — 

These richly robed and happy isles! — this Paradise 
to Man! — 

I marvel not the islanders regard thee as divine, 

For all that moves the heart of man to worship aught 
is thine ! 

Aye, all that moves the human heart to swell and rise 

above 
Earth's sweat and blood commingled mass into a 

heaven of love ; 
As thy fair form uprises, from a base of earth below. 
Into an apex in the skies of purest ice and snow ! 

symbol mountain of Japan ! Long may thy snows 
receive 

The sun's warm welcome in the morn, and fond fare- 
well at eve ; 

The first and last fair object in the OA'er-arching sky, 

The first and last fair image in the all-involving eye ! 

S 



146 PORTUGAL, 

An image in a myriad minds, to reappear in dreams, 
Surrounded with a halo of illuminating gleams ; 
An inwrought aspiration to the greatest good in man — 
A national incentive to the glory of Japan ! 

Aye, Fujiyama, peerless peak, enshrined thus in the 

heart. 
Long may thy hallowed form engross the sphere of 

native art ; 
That, multiplied a million-fold, on plate and fan and 

robe. 
Thou mayest prove an impulse to the glory of the 

globe ! 



AT RHODES. 



Now, Rhodes and Chares and the great Colossus, 

Holding aloft a lamp to symbolize 

The Sun illuminating all the world ; 

Anon, New York, Bartholdi, and the Statue 

Of Liberty enliglitening the world ! 

So, up and down the mundane see-saw goes; 

And who can say the next two thousand years 

Will not behold the former on his legs 

A seventh wonder of the world again, 

And the gigantic goddess of great Gotham 

Transported to the Mountains of the Moon, 

And set up in the stead of Mumbo Jumbo? 



PORTUGAL. 



A relic of a great and glorious past: 
The foot or femur of the extinct dodo ■ 
A recollection of the giant auk. 



ATHENS.-. 



WHAT IS POESY? 



147 



Suggested by the exquisitely beautiful waterfall of Nant 
d' Arpenaz, seen on the way from _ Chamouni , to Geneva, and 
written at the latter place, 1st September, 1880. 



Aye, what is Poesy ? A question to 
Be answered ere I pen another line. 

It is the icy pinnacle of Thought, 

That, melting in the sunshine of Good Feeling, 

Descends the isolated mount of Self 

To circle in and swell the Social Sea : " 

Here, prattling over pebbles, in a rill ; 
There, babbling under bridges, in a brook; 
Now, oping eyes of wonder, in a pool ; 
Anon, with laughter, playing hide-and-seek 
Among the ruins of a castled crag; 
At length, in fond fear, quiv'ring on a brink ; 
Then leaping boldly into unknown depths, — 
A veil of spray, that Avavers in the wind. 
And, fast as feeling comes and goes, reveals 
The beauty of the rainbow in it^ being. 
And shcipes itself insensibly into 
A perfect, pure, beloved and loving woman — 

A thing of thought, of beauty, and of love. 
Ennobling earth, and making heaven human! 



ATHENS. 



The Purple Crowned — Aye, with the purple blood 
That flushed the brain of Socrates in thought. 



148 IN A SILVEE. MINE OF NEVADA. 



IN A SILVER SHAFT OF NEVADA. 



Loquitur — An English Miner, 



Five hundred fathoms under ground ! — in an eternal 

night, 
With only this small miner's lamp to shed a ray of 

light ! — 
And full two thousand leagues from home ! — from my 

beloved wife, — 
My boys, — and my poor crippled girl, I love more 

than my life ! 

Shine, shine, lamp ! thou art the sun, within my 

lowly cot, 
That cheers the heart of Margaret, above the porridge 

pot, — 
That doubles in their shadows, Tom and Dick upon 

the floor, 
That crippled Peggie looking down, may play with 

them as four ! 

And thou, my pick ! be sharp of point to pierce these 

rocky walls. 
And quick of stroke to widen out these hot and humid 

halls, — 
Thou art the ship before the wind upon the stormy sea. 
To take me back to England or bring England here to 



And thou, my heart ! be full of faith ^ that in this world 

of strife, 
There is a recompense for all the miseries of life, — 



COAL IN SITU, 149 

There is bright sunshine for this night, — a heaven for 

this hell, — 
Where heart to heart, we can thank God, that all at 

last is well ! 



And thou, God ! I pray to thee, to whom our lives 

belong, 
Since she is weak, niy faithful wife, let me be hale and 

strong ; 
Since they should play, my bounding boys, let me not 

labor shirk ; 
And since poor Peggie's crushed — for her, Oh, save 

me at my work I 



MOUNT ^TNA. 



A Satyr 'mong the mountains of the world ; 
A monster made of man and goat and fire. 



A white-veiled nun, consumed with passion, till 
The energy of earth o'erwhelming all, 
The vow is broken with a heated breath, 
The vestment rent with shameless frenzy. 
And virtue left irreparable ruin ! ' 



COAL IN SITU. 



The sunshine of a world asleep in stone. 



A secret cell of treasured light, in night ; 
A reservoir of strength, in solid stone; 
A cavern of concentred storms, at rest ; 
A wondrous womb of giant life, in death. 



160 THE SEA. 

THE TIDES. 



The earth rotates in atmospheric loops 
( Ellipses like the orbit of the earth ) 
Affected by the light of sun and moon ; 
And following, responsive to these rings, 
The waters of the ocean rise and fall 
At the same time at points antipodal — 
An universal sympathetic heart ! — 

The key, or open-sesame, unto 

The secret chambers of the universe, 

Is not a quality of matter, Weight, 

But rather one of force, to wit, Rotation. 

The theory of Gravitation does 

Not solve the problem of opposing tides. 

Matter and Force are not convertible ; 

While Forms of Matter interchange, it seems, 

And Modes of Force, or Motion, correlate. 



SEA SICKNESS. 



From Folkestone to Boulogne, three hours in hell 



Monstrous ! the stomach of a man cannot 
Incorporate a geyser, and much less 
Involve Vesuvius — and yet and yet- 



I think I've turned the whole world inside out I 



THE SEA, 



The Sea, a second sympathetic Self: 
The tides, the throbbing of a greater heart; 
The storm, the raging of a stronger passion ; , 
The shadows flitting o'er the mirroring sheen, 
The vasue reflections of a cosmic mind. 



THE GOLDEN CHERSONESUS. 151 



THE GOLDEN CHERSONESUS. 



The time has been, when, to the wisest man, 
The soil was that he pressed beneath his sole; 
The land was that which lay beneath and 'round 

him ; 
The sbj, all that within his vision's scope ; 
The sea, the wat'ry waste o'er which he saw ; 
The earth, that which he sometime eared, or 

ploughed ; 
And heaven, that which heaved around and o'er 

him ; 
The voorld that which was tohirled above his head ; 
And God, the good to him within the world : 
Himself the centre of the universe, 
His vision's circle, its circumference ! 

Then was the world a little world indeed; 

And man, involving all within his brain, 

Proportionately of so big a bulk, 

He shaped the great Creator of the world 

Into the likeness of himself, a man ! — 

Belike, a potter making images 

In mud of those around him like himself, 

As the Jehovah of the Jew made Adam. 

But, haply, from the neighb'ring hill-top's height, 

The vision of the first philosopher 

Was stretched o'er lands and seas ne'er seen be- 
fore ; 

And from the farthest mount to which he ven- 
tured. 

With still the same world-aggrandizing end ! 

And as the world increased in size and lost 

Its finite metes and bounds, the man decreased, 



152 THE GOLDEN CHERSONESUS. 

And his Creator than himself was greater, 
But still a man — upon his hinder parts, 
If not his face, he still could look and live ; 
As Moses saw Jehovah on Mt. Sinai. 

Anon, a ship came sailing from the east, 

Another from the north, and south, and west, 

And the philosopher learned that the world 

Was spread indefinitely 'round him 'twixt 

Two regions in the north and south, of cold 

And heat, and two lands in the west and east, — 

The farthest Thule in the setting sun 

And Golden Chersoncsus in the rising : 

The Iceland of to-day, belike, and the 

Peninsula of south and eastern Asia. 

And as the world waxed as before, the man 

Waned, till behold! in contrast with his God — 

The world idealized and deified — 

He saw himself a puppet in the power 

Of one, the form and functions of a man 

No longer served to compass in his mind, 

And the indefinite, diversified, 

And double-dealing sign must stand in stead ! 

Woe worth the day, in his development, 

The Jew beheld Jehovah in the Ark 

In one form, and the Serpent in another — 

In other words, the God, that, as a man, 

Made Adam and revealed himself to Moses, 

Divided into twain, a man and woman, 

And compassablo only by sex symbols! 

Anon, a ship came sailing 'round the earth, 

And lo ! there was nor north, nor south, nor east, 

Nor west, save as conventionally fixed — 

The earth being a great rotating ball, 

Nor here nor there, nor up nor down, but turning 

Itself and all things topsy-turvy, till, 

Bewildered, dizzy, the philosopher 



THE GOLDEN CHERSONESUS. 153 

Beheld the earth in its complex relations 

With the fair moon, the glowing sun, the stars, 

The Milky Way and nebulae beyond ! 

And as the world expanded into space, 

As infinite unto the telescope 

As formerly unto the naked eye. 

The man shrank to a miserable worm 

No greater in the comprehension of 

The Infinite Incomprehensible, 

Than unto him, a microscopic mite ! 

Oh, for a moment of the long ago. 

The infancy of man upon the earth, 

When the great world and all that it contains 

Was made for man, and God was like himself, 

To meet him face to face, and talk to him, 

As Adam to Jehovah in the Garden ! 

Or, for a moment of the later age, 
The boyhood of mankind, when the great world 
Was still his heritage, and God, still man, 
Heard, if not seen, within the burning bush ! 

Or, for a moment of the later age. 

The youth of man, when the great world had still 

A limit in the west and in the east, — 

The farthest Thule in the setting sun. 

And Golden Chersonesus in the rising, — 

And God was somewhere in the Ark and Serpent! 

For, in the science of this latest age, 
The manhood of mankind upon the earth. 
The last fixed point has vanished from the world ; 
The finite God become the Infinite ; 
And man, the inverse of his thought of God, 
A speck in the infinity of space, 
T 



154 PHILIPPEVILLE. 

A tick in the infinity of time, 

A something-nothing, nothing-something what? 

That man is blest, that, going through the world 
If not around it, as the earth revolves, 
Ne'er goes beyond the Golden Chersonesus ! 



BOUJIE. 



Boujie — a name the Frenchman has applied » 
To that compound of wax and wick, a candle, 
Which, next, perhaps, to "tips" and "pour boires," 
Has caused the unsophisticated tourist 
From Yankeeland, to stare, and knit his brows, 
And utter maledictions deep and dire 
Against mine itemizing host and hostess ! 
Enter the D'Anglcterre at noon, and dine. 
And call then for your bill, and ten to one. 
Somewhere among your wines and meats, you'll 

find 
That little word stuck in, as if, in fact. 
You had been dining a la Eskimo ! 



PHILIPPEVILLE. 



The hope of the consumptive — Philippeville ! 
God grant it be not 'neath this azure dome. 
Where all is light and life, the mockery 
It proved in the great cavern of Kentucky ! 
Into the depth of which, with buoyant spirits, 
A score of flushed and heated invalids 
Descended, as into a Paradise, 
Albeit dark as death, and never came 
Into the sunshine of the world again ! 
Hope ! how often art thou but the path 
That leadest to the pitfall of destruction ! 



HOME ON THE HIMALAYAS. 155 



HOME ON THE HIM ALA YAS. 



LoQtiTUE — A Buddhist Thibetan, at Tungki, one of the 
minor heights of the Himalaya Mountains, about a mile and a 
half above the level of the Valley of the Ganges, and nearly 
four miles beneath the icy summit in sight of Deodonga, or 
Mt. Everest, the highest measured mountain of the gloTae,- — 
29,002 feet above the level of the sea. 



Mine is the home of Frost and Fire in an eternal strife ; 
Mine is the borderland between opposing Death and 

Life ; 
Mine is the half-way house between the Poles and the 

Equator ; 
Mine is the Mountain Kino; of Earth, ice-crowned by 

the Creator ! 

I know no North, I know no South, bnt up and down 

alone ; 
And as the seasons come and go, in this inverted zone, 
Keeping the grass beneath my feet, the ice above my 

head, ' ^^ 

I rise and fall — the gauge between the Living and the 

Dead ! . 

The yak and sheep my all in all, as up and down I 
pass, 

Descending with the snow and ice, ascending Avith the 
grass ; 

The big beast bearing house and home as its accustom- 
ed pack. 

The little, with life's precious salt well strapped upon 
its back. 



156 HOME ON THE HIMALAYAS. 

It's mine from infancy to find a fellow in the storm, 

And be familiar with its force and most appalling 
form ; 

To have in sight the world of shapes of clime succeed- 
ing clime, 

And formulate my fancies from the awful and sublime ! 

It's mine, at midday, to look down upon the peopled 

plain, 
Where the gigantic Ganges rolls its waters to the 

main, — 
To moralize upon the depth to which a man may sink, 
Down, down into the mud of vice — to putrify and 

stink ! 

Again, at midnight, to look up into the crystal dome, 
Where, like a thousand lamps, the stars illume a 

heavenly home, — 
To meditate upon the height to which a man may rise, 
Up, up the mount of virtue to an acme in the skies ! 

Perhaps to see, as I have oft, before the day-gleams 
glance, — 

Above the darkness of the vale — of childhood's igno- 
rance-, — 

Above the roaring of the storm — of manhood's crime 
and vice, — 

Above the world — of age's woes, — a sunlit point of 
ice! 

The grandest mountain of the globe — five miles or 

more in height — 
Burst, sun-illumined, from the black and all-involving 

night ! — 
To symbolize unto my mind the ultimate of good 
Achieved by mortal man on earth — the end attained 

by Buddh ! 



OFF THE COAST OF ABYSSINIA. 157 

awful apparition of the night and day combined, 
Of Earth and Heaven — Man and God — in glorious 

grandeur joined ! — 
To give a foresight to the soul of what above may be 
Of infinite effulgence and eternal ecstasy ! 

With head and heart and hand conjoined, in happy 
harmony, 

1 turn the sacred symbol wheel, in worship unto 

Thee, — 
Thou, Light of Asia woman-born, through Brahma's ^ 

mercy given, 
To lead Man from the Ganges up Himal'ya's height to 

Heaven ! 



^ While Buddhism in its purity is atheistic, it involves a 
variety of ideas of Divinity in the corrupted forms in which it 
is found among the millions of South-eastern Asia. 



CARTHAGE. 



The hide-bound citadel of Queen Elissa. 



THE SWEDES, 



The Swedes — the healthiest, the handsomest, 

The happiest, and honestest of all 

The people I have met with yet in Europe. 



OFE THE COAST OF ABYSSINIA. 



Behold ! the sun is setting on my right. 
Behind the hills of Abyssinia ! — 
Ah, me ! I am indeed far, far from home. 
When the whole width of the Dark Continent 
And the Atlantic Ocean lie between ! 



158 ARABIA. 

THE PORPOISE, OR DOLPHIN. 



Like ponies in a circus leaping hurdles. 



Like wethers bounding o'er the barnyard bars. 



THE SPHINX. 



An etfigy of ^gypt is the Sphinx : 
A marred and mutilated human face 
Uplifted in the sunlight of to-day 
Above the body of a buried beast 
In the o'erwhelming desert of the past. 



THE ICE- BERG. 



A Flying Dutchman of the Cronian Sea. 



THE FLYING FISH. 



Ambitious fish that would be butterflies. 



An infant reachino; out to catch the moon. 



Like hawkmoths heavy with the evening dew. 



Impassioned and impulsive impotence- 
An effort to emerge from out a sea 
Of sorrow into sunshine, but in vain. 



ARABIA. 



The aromatic ee:s;-land of the Phoenix. 



A barren, barren looking coast indeed, 
To breed so many fantasies afar ! 
But, after all, the beautiful and good 
Are never close at hand, but far away. 



THE TAJ MAHAL. 169 



THE TAJ MAHAL. 



As to the mass of man, his beating heart, 
So to the world,- the throbbing realm of Ind ; 
And as to man, his heart of hearts, or soul, 
So to the world, in Ind, the Taj Mahal ! 

Describe it ? Nay ! impossible, in words ; 
Depict it ? Nay ! impossible, in paint ; 
As well attempt a storm at sea in song, 
Or the resplendent crown of the Creator, 
The jeweled rainbow, on a yard of canvas ! 

And yet, since naught avails more potent than 

The pen and pencil to poor mortals, I 

Must fain make use of one or both, fair lady, 

Or lay me mute and palsied at your feet. 

So, by your gracious leave, I will take up 

The pen and pencil as it best beseems 

The subject. Look without, but see within. 

Within this beautiful and wondrous world. 

The fairest and the fertilest of lands, 

Boned by the Ghauts and the sublime Himal'yas, 

Veined by the holiest of streams, the Ganges, 

And fleshed with an alluvium producing 

The grandest growths of plants and animals, — 

The sacred soil of the divine Rig- Veda, — 

The classic scene of the Mahabharata, 

The Ramayana, and Sakuntala, — 

The motherland of history and art, — 

The fatherland of wisdom and religion, — 

The lotus-land of love and luxury, — 

The cradle, haply, of humanity, — 

The koh-in-oor of England's crown, fair Ind. 



160 THE TAJ MAHAL. 

Within this beautiful and wondrous land, 

A city of surpassing loveliness, 

Upon the sacred Jumna's beauteous banks, — 

The city Avhilom of the kings of Lodi, — 

The city afterward of their successors, 

The mighty monarchs of the Chagtai Turks, — 

The city known to fame throughout the world 

For its unrivaled palace, mosques, and tombs, — 

The city of the Great Mughal, fair Agra. 

Within this beautiful and wondrous city, 

Of fine red sandstone, hewn and laid with skill, 

Four lofty walls, joined deftly at right angles 

To form a perfect parallelogram, 

A third and over of an English mile 

In length, by a full fifth, or more, in width ; 

With a fair turret at each corner, and 

A grand gate in the middle of the front. 

And each of the side walls, as well — the front, 

The grandest of the three, surmounted with 

A score of marble domes ranged in two rows ; 

And from the parapet above, and through 

The doorway of the vaulted room beneath, 

Affording to the eye the fairest views. 

Within these beautiful and wondrous walls, 

In the eternal summer of the South, 

A garden of delight, as fair in fact 

As ever feigned in oriental fancy ; 

Unto the eye, filled with the forms of ferns 

And palms, in filmy, feathery arcades. 

And cypresses in dark contrasting spires. 

And spangled with the rarest flowers that bloom ; 

Unto the ear, filled with the hum of bees, — 

Winging their honied way from flower to flower, 

And thence to the suspended hive within 

The sheltered apex of a gateway arch, — 

And the sweet melody of countless birds, — 



THE TAJ MAHAL. 161 

Among the myriad, the love-sick bulbul 
Outpouring to the rose its soul, as sweetly 
As sung within the poesy of Persia ; 
Unto the nostril, filled, as well, with the 
Sweet perfumes of a myriad of flowers 
Compounded and distilled into a breath. 
As sweet belike as that which passed from God 
Into the red-earth of the first of men ; 
In fine, unto the all-involving senses, 
A beautiful and blissful Paradise ! 



Within this beautiful and wondrous garden, 

A marble basin parting it in twain, — 

A fountain studded with a hundred jets. 

Which, when in action, add the grace and beauty 

Of cataracts of gems unto the scene ; 

And when at rest, leaving the fount a mirror. 

In which, to the observer from the gateway. 

The foliage and flow'rs upon the sides, 

The birds and butterflies flitting above, 

Are, one and all, reflected, and, as Avell, 

The Taj set in the soft blue sky, beyond, — 

The marble of its domes and minarets 

Transformed, as by enchantment, into-pearl ! 

Beyond this beautiful and wondrous tank, 
Extending the full width of the fair garden. 
Upon the river's brink, a mural base. 
With marble faced, and forming a broad platform, 
A fathom, scant a third, above the garden. 
Upon this platform, on the left, approaching, 
A mosque of sandstone with three marble domes ; 
And on the right, a counterpart in all 
Save the essential fronting of a mosque ; 
Twin structures of exceeding grace, opposing 
As a fair face its image in a mirror. 
U 



162 THE TAJ MAHAL. 

Between these beautiful and wondrous mosques, 

A marble plinth, rising above the base 

Three fathoms — in effect, a second platform. 

In shape, a square of two and fifty fathoms. 

And, at each corner of the square, uprising 

A minaret of marble, tapering, 

Cylindric, and surmounted with a railed 

And roofed pavillion of the same fair substance — 

A tower in height 'full twenty-seven fathoms ! 

Among these beautiful and wondrous towers, 

Uprising from the centre of the plinth, 

The ultimate of the grand garden tombs 

Peculiar to the Mughal emperors 

Of Upper India, or Hindostan — 

The mausoleum proper of the Taj ! 

In shape, a cube — the corners, opposite 

The minarets cut off, and occupying 

A space of one and thirty fathoms square ; 

Surmounted with a cluster of fair domes. 

As graceful as if turned upon a lathe ; 

The central of them, in diameter. 

Eight fathoms and a third, and thirteen high ; 

The crecent of Muhammad on the top. 

Full forty fathoms and a half above 

The level of the garden — higher than 

The summit of the great Kutub Minar, 

The peerless Asiatic shaft, at Delhi ! 

And more than half the height of the world's 

wonder 
That towers above the valley of the Nile ! 
The whole of white and polished marble, cut 
And fit with nicest skill, with, here and there. 
Relieving to the lustre of the- walls. 
Inscriptions from the text of the Quran, 
In Persian characters, inlaid in jet. 

In one grand view, upon a single plinth. 
The monument of Trajan, of old Rome, 



THE TAJ MAHAL. 



163 



Tlie shaft of the Vendome, of modern Paris, 
The Alexander shaft, of Petersburgh, 
And the Albert Memorial, of London, 
With half of great St. Peter's in their midst ! 

Within this beautiful and wondrous pile, 
A series of communicating chambers. 
Within the central and the chief, beneath 
An echoing dome, a marble fence or screen, 
So finely chiseled in an open pattern 
That it can be comjjared alone to lace, 
'■And so inlaid with precious stones, in floral. 
And other apt designs, that it can be 
Compared alone to what hath ne'er been seen 
Save in the fancy of the covetous — 
In caverns, in the depths untold of earth. 
Illumined with a galaxy of gems 
Set in a sapphire sky instead of stars ; 
Or gardens, wrought by an enchanter's wand. 
In which the verdant leaves are emeralds, 
The ruddy roses, rubies, and the dew 
Bespangling all, the scattered dust of diamonds ! 

Within this beautiful and wondrous screen. 
Two monumental slabs, or cenotaphs, 
Of marble of the finest mold and finish, 
Transmitting to all time the names of those 
Who rest beneath, in two sarcophagi, — 
The empress, Mumtaz, in whose memory. 
And Shah Jehan, the emp'ror, at whose word. 
The peerless and incomparable tomb 
Was built — employing twenty thousand men 
For twenty years ! at an expenditure 
Of gold enough to make a casket of 
The precious metal to contain itself! 



But oh, how feeble and imperfect fact 
And figure to convey an image of 



164 THE TAJ MAHAL. 

The Taj as a sublime, seraphic whole, 
And its effect upon the Avanderer 
Responsive to the beautiful and pure ! 

One cries aloud, " There is no mystery, 
No sense of partial failure, in the Taj. 
A thing of perfect beauty in detail. 
It might pass for the work of genii, who 
Knew nothing of the weaknesses and ills 
With which mankind incarnate are beset ! " — 

( Bayard Taylor. ) 

Another says, " The Taj is more a vision 
Of beauty than a firm reality — 
A dream in palpable and solid marble — 
A thought, a sentiment of tenderness, 
A sigh of an engrossing mortal love. 
Caught and imbued with such eternity 
As the foundations of the earth can give ! " — 

( Anonymous. ) 

A third exclaims, " Until the day I die. 

Mid mountain streams and moonlit forest strolls, 

Wherever and whenever the mood comes. 

When all that is most sacred and sublime 

Recur to shed their radiance upon 

The tranquil mind, there will be found among 

My treasures a rare gem of priceless worth. 

The mem'ry of that lovely charm, the Taj ! " 

( Andrew Carnegie. ) 

A fourth declares, " The Taj Mahal ! it is 
Too pure to be the work of human hands. 
The angels must have brought it from high heaven. 
And a glass case should be placed over it 
To shield it from the faintest breath of air ! " — 

( ZoFFANY, A Russian. ) 



THE TAJ MAHAL. 165 

A fifth exclaims, " The Taj ! the sight of it 
Marks a new era in a mortal's life ! " — 

( Bholanauth Chunder, a Hindoo. ) 

A sixth, " It stands, in beauty, purity, 
And lustre, as unrivaled on the earth, 
As the effulgent full moon in high heaven ! " — 

( Anonymous.) 

A seventh sees in it, '' Of wedded love, 
The most sublime romance ! " — 

( Anonymous. ) 

An eighth, as well, 
" The last triumphant wonder of the world ! " — 

( Lady Nugent. ) 

To add to or to supplement all which. 
What can I say ? But this alone, in truth, 
That, having viewed in a succession the 
Most beautiful of all the buildings of 
The continental quarters of the globe, 
And while their images were still distinct 
And lustrous in my memory, the Taj 
Surpassed, not only all I had beheld, 
But also the extravagant conceptions 
I had compounded with rapt vision from 
The glowing pages of my predecessors. 

When, standing in the grandest of the gateways, 

I, from that vantage point, beheld it first, 

I stood in a suspense of ecstasy ; 

Until my senses, sunk within the sea 

Of wild emotion welling from my heart, 

I staggered in a strange bewilderment, 

And sank exhausted in a flood of tears ! 

I do not feign a feeling I have not. 

It hath been writ of yore, that strong men oft, 



166 THE CLEPSYDRA. 

Beholding, the first time, the peerless Taj, 

So wondrously effective in itself. 

In its surroundings, and in sentiment, 

Have wept, as children weep ; and when the strong 

Give way to tears, why may not, too, the weak? 



HELIOPOLIS. 



Of Heliopolis, an obelisk, 
Its glyphs bedaubed by wasps, alone remains 
Like a projecting rib of a great carcase 
Now indistinguishable from Nile mud. 



THE RED SEA. 



An arm of the Arabian Sea out-reached 

To show the way and lend a hand to Lesseps. 



IVAN IVANOVITGH. 



When placed beside Ivan Ivanovitch, 
Striding from continent to continent, 
The Rhodian Colossus were a pygmy. 



THE CLEPSYDRA. 



Man being but an involution of 
The world into an aping organism, 
There cannot be a thought conceived within 
The convolutions of the sage's brain. 
That has not been prefigured and set up 
In most stupendous shapes and characters, 
Before the sentient mirror of his mind. 
The water-clock — what is the ocean, with 
Its regular recurrent tides, but an 
Enormous and eternal clepsydra? 



A STORM AT SEA. 167 



A STORM AT SEA. 



On the 23rd. of October, 1880, in order to traverse the wa- 
tery way between London, England, and Oporto, Portugal, I 
embarked on an English merchant-ship, of 720 tons burden, 
called the Benbow, after the gallant English admiral of that 
name. 

The little vessel, built exclusively for the transportation of 
goods, was so meagre in its accommodations even for a single 
passenger, that the captain was obliged to give me my choice 
between the chart-room amidships and his stateroom in the 
cabin in the stern. I chose the stateroom, a cramped and close 
recess which may be compared, without exaggeration, to a 
closet containing a bureau and a bunk on top, to which access 
was obtained only by making a ladder of the knobs of the 
bureau drawers. 

• The greater part of the weight of the cargo comprised 
sugar, cement, and iron ; while the greater part of the bulk 
consisted of empty wine casks: bunged, as I was happy to 
observe when I embarked : each and every of them forming, 
as I conceived, a water-tight compartment, and guaranteeing 
the vessel's keeping afloat until parted in twain and the barrels 
liberated. 

The weather for the preceding ten days had been stormy ; 
and in the lull at London, I looked forward to a smooth and 
pleasant voyage across the Bay of Biscay, which is noted for 
the frequency and severity of its tempests. 

In crossing the Margate Sands, at the mouth of the 
Thames, however, my expectations were abandoned suddenly 
in such a battering, bumping, thumping, pitching, tossing — 
sky-toading one minute, and plunging into unfathomable 
depths the next, as I had never experienced before ; and, I 
may add, too, in such agony as I had never realized before the 
human body was capable of enduring for more than a few 
minutes ; albeit, wretchedly sea-sick in every vessel, large and 
small, in which I had ever ventured upon the ocean. 

"With the first rolling and pitching of the little vessel in 
the ground-swell of the Channel, I ascended the ladder of 
drawer-knobs, and lay down on the bunk ; which happily was 
protected by a guard-rail high enough to prevent me from 
rolling out in any movement of the vessel less than overturn- 
ing bottom-upward. 



168 A STORM AT SEA. 

And there I lay, aching, wretching, straining, writhing, 
smothering, moaning, groaning, and gasping, for four days ! 

Until, my stomach, retaining neither food nor drink 
during this long period, and my body worn out with the cease- 
less rocking and rolling and beating about in my bunk com- 
bined with the exhausting effects of sea-sickness, I became 
insensible to pain, and sank into a sleep that seemed to others 
to be my last ; in my delirious dreams constantly slaking my 
thirst at the purling fountains and rippling rills among the 
hills and valleys of my native land, rapidly receding from my 
memory and forever ! 

When, alarmed at my condition, the good captain directed 
the sailors to carry me out of the feverish atmosphere of the 
little cabin, and place me in the open air in a sheltered place 
on the bridge, above the engine-house and chart-room amid- 
ships. 

Accordingly, I was carried up the narroAV companion-way, 
down which the splash of the waves descended by tubfuls. 
whenever the turtle-back shield which protected its entrance 
was removed ; thence, along a fore-and-aft gang-way that con- 
nected the cabin in the stern with the chart-room ; and thence, 
up a ladder to the bridge; where, seated on a camp-stool, and 
lashed to a stancheon behind a screen of canvas, I was left to 
revive. 

In a short time, reanimated by the cool fresh air entering 
and abating the fever in my lungs, and the splash and spray of 
the troubled waters ever and anon bathing my heated head, — 
encouraged by the kindly care of my companions, — and invig- 
orated by the excitement of the elemental war in the midst of 
which I Avas bound, hand and foot, a lielpless prisoner, I found 
relief, and, in a measure, recovered my health and spirits ; and, 
in the course of the storm's continuance, from the moment of 
my reiinimation, I became a studious observer of the tempest, 
in its iill-involving grandeur and sublimity. 



The wind blew from the south-west a terrific gale : so 
strangely solid in its viewless might, it seemed to 
be an avalanche of atmospheric ice. 

The ship, belittled in the midst of the immensities of 
wind and wave, projected from the ocean like a 
half-submerged, seesawing, tree-trunk snag : in its 
opposing prow, a pointed tap-root cleaving both 



A STORM AT SEA. 169 

the ocean flood and airy avalanche; and in its 
masts and rigging, spreading branches ripping, 
tearing, riving, rasping through the seeming ice- 
crevasse, no sooner oped than closed. 

The iron cordage rang in weird harmonic tones : tem- 
pest-twanged, resounding like the strings of a gi- 
gantic harp when struck with fury to incite to war. 

A tattered top-sail flapped against the quivering mast ; 
then, streaming in the wind, it cracked like an 
ox-driver's whip ; till, having parted from its brok- 
en spar, it swirled and fluttered like an albatross 
wing-crippled by a gun-shot in midsky. 

The billows came in a succession of majestic ridges 
from, the waste of the Atlantic ; on ! on ! on ! from 
crest to crest, the length from stem to stern of the 
included vessel ; on ! on ! on ! from crest to trough, 
the height from bridge to keelson ; on ! on ! on ! 
as rhythmically as pulsations from an oceanic 
heart. 

Anon, the line of ridge-like billows broke "into a chaos 
of stupendous waves. 

The vessel quivered as it pitched and rolled, like an or- 
ganic sentient thing strained in a struggle for ex- 
istence : fore and aft, its joined and mortised tim- 
bers creaking as if wrenched within a point of 
parting in a general dismemberment; and every 
part less fixed, and parcel movable, in its encom- 
passing, or rubbing; scraping, flapping, striking, 
crashing, or the like, — compounding an incessant 
and portentous din : betimes alarming, like an 
earthquake to a dweller in a cave. 

The ship descending a receding sea, the flanged pro- 
pelling screw, raised from the Avater by the heaving 
stern, whirled in the less resisting air with rapidly 

V 



170 A STORM AT SEA, 

increased velocity : the shaft transmitting this un- 
to the world of wheels within : the wheels unto 
the engine, till it fluttered in its puffing like a 
swallow on the wing. 

And lo ! before the sinking aft and rising forward of 
the vessel came, to mount aright the flank of 
the succeeding wave, the bow plunged into an 
enormous water-wall : on-coming seemingly in 
overwhelming magnitude and might. 

The water shipped poured in a broad sheet from the 
forec's'le to the sunken deck, and swept and 
swashed along it — seemingly, with baflfled rage, 
like a ferocious beast entrapped. 

The crest of the great wave, cut off, caught up, and 
carried by the wind, came bounding over and 
against the bridge — a tiger leap combined with a 
cascade. 

The captain bowed his head below the canvas bul- 
wark and escaped the flying flood ; but the old 
sailor at the wheel, behind him without shelter, 
vanished for a moment in the deluge that came 
down upon his head and beat against his face 
and breast. 

The rapidh'^ revolving screw reentered the resisting wa- 
ter, jarring the belabored ship from truck to keel- 
son : its expanded convoluted flanges striking the 
sea-surface, like the tail of a deep-wounded whale, 
in its descent impelled by fright and pain. 

But howsoe'er chaotic the sea -surface at first view, the 
rhythmical pulsations still pervaded the unfath- 
omable depths : appearing only to the vision of 
experience, like the successive formative upheav- 
als in the intricacies of the Alps to eyes familiar 
with the mountain-maze of Appalachia. 



A STORM AT SEA. 171 

On ! on ! on ! they came, like periodic paroxysms; on ! 
on! on! unnumbered times — for numbers were 
invented to count pence and pounds, not kisses 
and convulsions ; on ! on ! on ! in agonizing iter- 
ation : till the pulses passed into the pendulum 
of an enormous clock, — the snail-paced finger on 
the dial f^scuing, not finite time, but infinite eter- 
nity. 

Anon, cross seas appeared : pulsations coming at the 
same time from the south-west and the west: cre- 
ating at the points of intersection most colossal 
single seas: upheaving, seething water-domes: 
half geyser and half whirlpool: monsters born 
untimely and short-lived. 

The captain spake — his accents startling like the shock 
of a galvanic battery. 

The wheel went round and round. 

I looked along the fixed line of the captain's vision, 
and behold ! a water-mountain seemingly uprising 
from the bottom of the ocean, off the vessel's star- 
board boAV, and, deviating from the general direc- 
tion of the tempest's course, a-sidling tow'rd the 
ship in sinistral obliquity: a black and grizzled 
monster of malignity ! 

A moment later and the good ship met the moving 
mountain at its base, and steadily and buoyantly 
ascended its forbidding flank, until, the summit 
almost reached, it wavered, wabbled, and, depart- 
ing for an instant from its course, went adrift — 
the rudder being smaller than the broadside of the 
ship ! 

And going with the tempest, not against it as before, — 
the hurricane seemed suddenly to hold its breath : 
as I did mine : awaiting the engulfing of the ves- 
sel which the strange lull seemed to augur, as the 
sick-bed's light'ning, death ! 



172 A STORM AT SEA. 

The ship was at the mercy of the wind and wave. 

But for an awful moment, happily. 

Till righted in the only line allowed it for resistance ; 
and presenting in its proAV again, a cleaving wedge 
unto the forces of the ocean and the air, it shiver- 
ed, pitched, and rolled — it ripped, and rasped, 
and rang, — it struggled, groaned, and panted, as 
before. 

And the gigantic ocean-clock, not having struck the 
hour of doom, continued, in the periodic throes, 
to tick eternity. 

Anon, the waves were capped with white, as far as I 
could see ; then churned into a sea of foam ; then 
streaked and mottled strangely to vast depths ; 
then whisked up into such a spray of flying water, 
whitened and solidified, they seemed to be conver- 
ted into driven snow. 

And lo ! the snow-storm having passed, the spind-drift, 
in the swirling gusts that followed, spread out o'er 
the sable mantle of the ocean like a shawl of lus- 
trous white and deftly woven lace. 

But what is that — and that — and that, that breaks 
the surface with a shape not soluble? A bed! a 
trunk ! a spar ! shuddering sight ! we are 
among the drifting wreckage of a foundered ship ! 

My eyes, bedimraed and smarting Avith the spray and 
water whisked and driven into them betimes, ached 
in my fate-forseeing apprehension to discern the 
semblance of a human being clinging to the wreck- 
age to prolong the agony of his existence in the 
vortex of inevitable death ; but happily my eyes 
were spared that awful spectacle ! 

Anon, the storm-rack veiled the light of day : con- 
densing, dipping low, and deep'ning in lividity ; 
on-bringing an unnatural night: increasing in 



A STORM AT SEA. 173 

forbidding gloom like a descent into a panther- 
haunted cave : and filled with dread uncertainty, 
like an adventuring alone into an unexplored 

recess. 

The lightning darted with increasing frequency and 
blinding brilliancy : zigzagging purple-tinted in 
the overarching sky, like cracks appearing in the 
bottorp of a ladle dipped in molten steel. 

The thunder rattled, crashed, and rolled : subordinating 
ever and anon the sense of sight to that of hear- 
ing, and transporting me in fancy from the ele- 
mental war at sea to an engagement 'twixt embat- 
tled hosts on land. 

The rain came on apace. 

I caught the spluttering drops of the prelusive sprinkle 
in my open mouth, and found in their diffusion 
on my tongue the first relief to my delirious thirst. 

Succeeding showers descended like great curtains : wav- 
ing in the wind, and sensibly abating its velocity 
and violence. 

And the infinity of water pellets pattered on the heads 
of the gigantic waves, till they were humbled and 
deprived of their defiant crests. 

But what ! hath this most inconsiderable globule that 
alights upon my tongue and weighs not down the 
tip — hath this minutest w^ater-sphere the power 
in its descent to hobble the tornado in its air-con- 
gealing course, and shackle the Atlantic in its 
mountain-moving might? Yea, even so! as soft- 
est accents fall into the ears of the enraged and 
furious, and calm the storm of passion in a mon- 
ster's breast. 

Anon, the cmrkness of the cloud-eclipse decreased. 

The solid sky broke into fragments in confusion : driv- 



174 A STORM AT SEA. 

ing here, dividing there, and massing yonder, like 
the mud and blood begrimed survivors of the 
French at Waterloo, impetuously fleeing, wildly 
scatt'ring, and fortuitously gath'ring in bewildered 
groups. 
At length, a patch of blue appeared in the chaotic sky. 

The slanting beams of the descending sun came through 
the breach in the dividing and dissolving rack 
with dazzling brilliancy. 

And lo ! the arch of a resplendent rainbow spanned 
the eastern sky ! 

And the surrounding world of waters, but a moment 
since as black and sheenless as the fabled floods of 
Acheron, was changed into an ocean of comming- 
ling gems: transparent, sparkling, interblending : 
ruby, sapphire, emerald, and diamond ! 

Were ever the opposing eyes of man filled with a more 
enchanting spectacle ! 

Most pitifully weak from the combined effects of my 
prolonged sea-sickness and privation from both 
food and drink, I, ne'ertheless, incited by the beau- 
ty of the scene, had strength enough to get upon 
my feet, and, clinging to the canvas-shield and 
iron stancheons of the bridge, to scan, with the 
most comprehensive scope of vision, the bejeweled 
sea and sky — the all-involving world, a flashing 
iridescent gem ! 

An d then, in my responsive rapture, wonderment, and 
awe, to close my eyes unto the might and splen- 
dor of the storm : forever after, willing to be 
blind ; and bow my head : resigned to any fate. 

I had involved a power and a glory not transcended 
on the earth. 

Earth had no more to give ; Life had no more to take. 



THE SUEZ CANAL. 175 

I was content to die. 

I had beheld the face of God, and felt His hand. 



The captain of the Benbow had headed the vessel toward 
the Spanish harbor of Vigo for shelter ; but when, in the even- 
ing of the fifth day out from London, the storm had abated 
somewhat, he turned its bow again to the storm and the 
open sea. 

In the morning of the sixth day, we approached the har- 
bor of Oporto, but were warned by cannons fired on the shore 
not to attempt to cross the dangerous bar at its mouth. 

The bow of the Benbow was turned again to the storm 
and the open sea ; and it was not until the following morning, 
seven full days lacking two lioxu's from the time we set sail, 
that we crossed the bar in safety and anchored in the snug 
little harbor of the port which has given name to Portugal. 

It remains now, only to be told that in the storm which 
the Benbow survived, as many as one hundred and sixty vessels, 
according to The Illustrated London News, for the follow- 
ing week, were wrecked on the shores of the British Isles 
alone ! 



ASIA. 

Metempsychosis to Americans — 
A visual transmigration back into 
The bodies of an immature existence. 



THE SUEZ CANAL. 



■ A canal is impossible ^ the thing would be a ditch." — 

Robert Stephenson. 



A ditch. So be it ; but a ditch that makes 
An island of the* Ebon Continent, 
And buckles up the girdle of the world 
A hole or two, the better for its business. 



176 THE HJEIiL OF HALEMiAUMAU. 



THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAW 



Hawiiii ^ is the most southerly and easterly, the largest, and 
the most recently formed of the cluster of eleven islets in the 
North Pacific Ocean which constitute the domain of the king- 
dom of Hawaii, the Hawaiian, or Sandwich Islands. It is a 
pile of volcanic mountain cones, or essentially a vast volcano, 
which, rising from the abyss of the Pacific Ocean and attain- 
ing an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet above its surface, equals, 
in altitude above the bottom of the sea, the highest of the 
Himalayas above the level of the valley of the Ganges ; and as 
such, it presents an exposition of the volcano as a factor in the 
formation of the solid earth, which for grandeur and sublimity 
as a spectacle and at the same time for completeness and con- 
venience of study, is without a parallel on the globe. 

Kilauea* is the most persistently active of the superficial 
volcanoes of Hawaii ; and as an i^ndividual, aside from its asso- 
ciates, it is among the largest of the active volcanoes of the 
world. It is the fifth and most recently developed of the 
culminating points of the volcanic activity of the island, and 
is situated on its southeastern aspect, or strictly in accordance 
with the formula of the formative forces of Hawaii and the 
group to whicli it belongs, from the northwest to the southeast, 
and in accordance with the intersecting lines of fracture in the 
crust of the earth as delineated by Mr. William Lowthian 
Green, assuming that the globe in cooling from a molten spher- 
ical mass has collapsed into a wavering compromise or uncer- 
tain equipoise between a spheroid and a hexa-tetrahedron — 
the constant activity of Kilauea attesting it an ultimate, or a 
terminal point of earth-formation which, in its relation to the 
Hawaiian Islands, may be likened to the purple flower-bud of 
the banana in advance of the cluster of its fruit. The rim of 
its crater-pit, compound crater, or calderon, is about 4,000 feet 
abov© the level of the sea ; the circumference of the same 8.6865 
miles, or nearly nine ; and the depth from 500 to 1,800 feet, as 
the liquid lava rises and falls in it — at present ( 28th February, 
1885,) it is supposed to be about 600 feet to the general level 
of the floor of the calderon, and 500 to the level of the liquid 
lava in its several active centres, craters, or lakes. By the walls 
of the volcano giving way, the gradually accumulated lava is 



THE HELL OF HALB^mAuMAU. 177 

discharged by a lateral vent every eight or nine years; and 
only once in its history, in 1789, has there been an explosive 
eruption from the crater-mouth. 

Halemaumau is the older and the more active, picturesque, 
and remarkable in many ways of the two great craters contain- 
ing lava in tumultuous ebullition at present in the calderon of 
Kilauea, and the most interesting of the infinity of phenomena 
which the volcano presents — in fine, the centre of the attrac- 
tions of Hawaii. In its relation with the volcanoes of the 
earth at large, it ( or-Kilauea as a whole ) is perhaps the least 
evolved, and may be put at the foot of the list, with Vesuvius 
at the head ; the one in one of the four great tetrahedral oceanic- 
areas of depression of the earth, emitting simple, basic, doleritic 
and anhydrous, or cosmical lavas, (identical mineralogically 
with a vast number of the solid meteorites which from time to 
time have fallen on the surface of the earth,) and the other in 
one of the four great tetrahedral continental-areas of elevation 
emitting lavas of the most complex character ; the one quietly 
and steadily active and the other explosively and spasmodical- 
ly; the one, according to the conceptions of Mr. Green, (for 
which may the volcanic mountain-mass of Hawaii be an eternal 
monument ! ) a resultant at the intersection of the tetrahedral 
shrinkage'-fractm-es of the earth, and the other in the line of 
the great telluric twist of the earth on its axis ; or, regarding 
the earth as a hexa-tetrahedron, in the line of the shifting of 
its planes into a macled form of the crystalline figure.* It may 
be likened to a barometer on a stupendous scale ; for as the 
liquid mercury rises in the tube of the barometer responsive to 
the pressure of the atmosphere upon the metal contained in 
the compressible and elastic bulb at the base of the instrument, 
so the liquid lava of Halemaumau rises in its self-formed cylin- 
der in accordance with the pressure upon the molten forms of 
matter contained in the shrinking sack, or the flexible frangible 
crust, of the cooling collapsing earth. The present cone of the 
crater called Halemaumau has been developed since the year 
1868. Its walls rise from eighty to one hundred and fifty feet 
above the level of the liquid interior; and albeit of the most 
chaotic character, they exhibit an interesting series of concave 
lines of stratification, showing their formation to have been 
made by successive outpourings and their apparent upheaval 
effected in part by an ascending central force, and in part by 
lateral ( hydrostatic ) pressure. 

Pele ^ is a mental mythic monster of the Hawiliians, com- 
pounded of the phenomena of their grand volcanic environ- 

w 



178 THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 

ment and themselves — a malignant and destructive monster, 
half volcanic outburst and half savage ; and curiously of the 
feminine gender, a she-divinity ( to use the phraseology of one 
of England's poets, ) or a goddess ; as if in recognition of the 
fact, not beyond the comprehension of savages, that a woman 
has the might and means within herself to be a greater monster 
of destruction than a man, he being limited to the past and 
present, and she having the range of the past, the present, and 
the future. She was supposed to reside, by turns, in the several 
active volcanoes, but especially in Kilauea, in Halemiiumau ; 
and she was the recipient of a worship possibly more general 
among the Hawaiians than any other of tbeir gods and god- 
desses — and which, b J' no means, has become extinct yet ; as 
the sacrifice of the Princess Ruth as late as 1881, referred to in 
the poem, is a sufficient proof. A complete exposition of Pi61e, 
however, as a historical, religious, and social personage, albeit 
an ideal monster, would require, like any of the foregoing sub- 
jects, a volume rather than a paragraph. 



I sit upon the good ship's quarter-deck, 

In silent, self-secluded reverie : 

A musing barnacle upon the back 

Of a Pacific sulphur-bottom whale. 

( I like a simile, especially 

When it involves me in a grotesque guise; 

As children love to look in wrinkled mirrors 

And see themselves as mannikins and monsters.) 

Now, noting, haply, in the sky astern, 

The sooty albatross, with outspread wings, 

Shaped like a scj^the or the crescentic moon, . 

Sweep, swirl, and pirouette, as if it were 

The curve of beauty avified upon 

The palette of the painter of the sea ; 

Now, in the sea abeam, the shadow of 

A roving shark — its pointed dorsal fin 

Uprising from the rippling surface, like 

The black-flag of a dreaded pirate-craft 

On the horizon heaving into sight ; 

Anon, ahead, a startled flying-fish. 

With glassy wing-like fins, rise from the sea 



THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 179 

And wing a gleaming scintillating flight 
In the bright sunshine for a moment, then 
Sink in the all-concealing ocean, like 
A fact that rises from the salt, salt sea 
Of commonplace and flits a fancy in 
The sunshine of my musing for a time, — 
The length of the first kiss of lovelings, — then 
Sinks in the ocean of oblivion. 

Until, oho ! the ship is anchored in 

The bay of Hilo, and behold ! the isle 

Hawaii : a long-buried age and clime, 

In miniature, of the revolving earth ; 

When the first cooling crag of its great mass 

Of molten matter, whirling from the sun, 

Appeared above the cinders of the sea 

Within the fire-freed gases of the air. 

And the first forms of vegetable life. 

The lichen, moss, and fern, began to weave 

A cincture for the new-born planet Eve. 

Hawaii — Aye, a mimic infant Earth, 

" Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms." 

Well mounted on a sinewy, fresh-shod horse, 

As sure of foot as a cliff-climbing goat, 

I jog along a narrow, rugged path. 

Worn in the lava by my predecessors, 

And bringing back to mind the wheel-worn rut 

Within the lava pavement of Pompeii. 

Now, turning to the right to note the flood 
That came from mighty Mauna Loa's ® mouth 
Four years ago — a flood of molten lava. 
In self-encasing arteries of slag. 
Descending slope, ravine, and precipice — 
A deluge of destruction pouring down 
Resistless, a Niagara of fire ! 
And staying not, until, approaching Hilo, 



180 THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 

FqII forty miles from its volcanic source, 
The Princess Ruth, of ancient faith, appeared, 
And sacrificing raiment, meat and drink 
Unto the goddess of her heathen sires. 
The dreaded Pele — fire personified — 
The, flood of fire was turned to solid stone ! 
And so remains, in attestation of 
The pow'r of Pele and the faith of Ruth, 
To all the world unto the end of time. 
In black, appalling, overwhelming waves. 
Upon the edge of the uninjured town ! 

But out upon this shaj^ing of the world 

To fit our fancies, whims, conceits, and dreams. 

Till self-deluded, we believe in them 

As entities outside our simple selves 

And worship them as gods of good and evil ; 

Instead of shaping our ideas, thoughts, 

And fantasies to fit the world of fact — 

The entities of our environment 

Within the reach and rapture of our senses ! 

Now, turning to the left to note a fern ^ 
Among the leaf}'^ wonders of the isle : 
A circle of unbroken, arching fronds, 
Full thirty feet from tip to tip, above 
A drapery of drooping lifeless leaves 
Around the trunk of their supporting tree : 
A crown unto the forest chieftain's head. 
And to his face a mummer's mask as well. 

Now, holding a straight course amid a copse 

Of such resplendent and luxuriant growth, 

I seem to sit again in a canoe 

And drift adown the mighty Amazon, 

A speechless wonderer among its palms 

Transformed into as vast and varied ferns — 

A marvel here,^ full forty feet in height. 



THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 181 

And t\yo in width across its tree4ike trunk ; 
Another there, the feathers of the Roc 
Of Sindbad metamorphosed into fronds ! 

Anon, within a scrubby wilderness, 
In which the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, 
The goat, the hog, the dog, the cat, and chicken 
Have wandered back into their primal state 
Of savag'ry before the wit of man 
Subordinated them unto his will. 

Until, at length, borne over thirty miles 
Of lava in unnumbered curious forms — 
Swirled, hummocked, pitted, caverned, creased, 

o'erlapped, 
Cragged, fretted, bulged, rent, fluted, rolled, and 

crushed, — 
And lifted up some forty hundred feet 
Above the level of the circling sea, 
I check my jaded horse upon the brink 
Of an abyss a hundred fathoms deep, 
And, in circumference, three leagues or more, 
The compound calderon of Kilauea : 
The counterfeit presentment, at my feet, 
In planetary objectivity. 
Of the volcanic moon, above my head, 
In interstellar sheen and mysticism ! 
Was ever revelation unto man 
More wonderful ! As if I had, in fact. 
The moon beneath a microscopic lens — 
Its orb expanded twenty thousand times, 
And every pockmark in its seeming face 
Enlarged into an isle-engulfing pit ; 
The silver in the heavens dross on earth. 
Black, broken, ragged, jagged furnace-slag ! 
Aye, looking into Kilauea, I 
Behold the moon, as Gulliver, among 
The Brobdingnags, the charms of Glumdalclitch ! 



182 THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 

Descensus facilis Averni ; so 

The way into the depths of Kilauea. 

From crag to crag, with alpine-stock in hand, 

( And Virgil, as he traversed hell with Dante, 

Beside me, in the guise of a Kanaka,® ) 

I pass into the fire-formed, slag-walled chasm. 

Now, noting on the brink of the abyss 

A fringe of interwoven ferns and roses, 

Recalling to my mind the floral wreaths 

Around the bald skulls of Palermo's dead, 

And the allurements of the limner's art 

Upon the house-walls of Pompeii's vice. 

Now, coming to the great crescentic plane 

That forms the northern portion of the pit, — 

What bushes hang their berries in my sight,^** 

As if, with Atalanta's art, to tempt 

Me from my course — pink berries, tartly sweet, 

Like pouting lips that cry and kiss at once ; 

But all in vain ; I stoop and eat, but stay not. 

Now, coming to a second level plane 

That forms the floor of Kilauea proper, 

I leave the line of life and all is death — 

I walk upon the surface of a sea, 

As black and still, though broken into waves, 

And swirling eddies, curling crests and surf. 

As if it were the floods of Acheron 

Tossed by a tempest to the highest notch, 

And in that instant frozen into ice ! 

A Mer-de-Glace of glassy, glossy lava. 

Bespangled with a dust of olivine 

In golden points and iridescent hues. 

As I have seen the sea at midnight starred 

And streaming with prismatic living light — 

That of the phosphorescent acalephs. 

Anon, amid the fumes and gases from 

A score of vents, and in the scorching heat 

Emitted from two glowing, flaming chimneys 

Yclept the Little Beggars — in their throats 



THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 183 

Great diphtheritic clots depending, like 
Stalactites in a limestone cave, — I pause, 
Uncertain, hesitating, fearful, lest 
The crust of lava break beneath my feet, 
As haply it has done a thousand tirues, 
And in the liquid fire, I perish, like 
Empedocles within the flood of ^tna ! 
I pause, but for a moment, then proceed — 
My fears henceforth dispelled in the delight 
Of apprehended imminent destruction. 

Until, at length, a league of lava traversed. 

And a great ragged, rock-like, reeking rim, 

( In the similitude of an immense 

Cathedral pile in smoking, toppling ruin, ) 

Ascended and descended, I recoil 

A step, and stand transfixed in awe and wonder : 

I am within the trembling, steaming walls 

Of Kilauea's centre, and behold 

The lake of liquid lava, Halemimnau ! " 

In shape elliptic, and in circuit half 

A mile, in ragged lines obscured by steam ; 

The surface of the molten mass, a scum. 

Like sable satin, ever setting from 

The centre, and, in crinkling laps and folds 

And crunching volutes, breaking on the shores ; 

Here, parting and revealing through a rent 

The liquid fire beneath, in bands and seams 

Of interblending pink and cherry-red ; 

There, heaving in elastic billows, and, 

In vast concentric circles eddying, 

Till parting in a swaying arc, an ooze 

Of glowing lava, pink and orange hued. 

Appears, and like a worm of unctious fire 

Upon a deep black velvet leaflet, writhes, 

Until, with fading colors, it expires ; 

Here, parting on the shore-surf's crinkling crest, 

A myriad of jets of bluish flame 



184 THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 

Leap from the sharp uplifted fracture, like 

A fringe of blue upon a fun'ral jDall; 

There, cracking suddenly from shore to shore, 

The liquid fire appears along the line 

Like lurid lightning in a midnight sky — 

And see ! that jet of water-gas escape 

And carry with it in the air a spurt 

Of lava in the form of glassy floss " 

As fine as ever spun by China's worm — 

A lock belike froni Pele's frizzled pow ; 

And here, the surface rocking, swirling, till 

Dissolving, lo ! within the circle formed, 

A fount of fire ! the solid central cones 

Uprising twenty feet, the spluttering spurts 

As many more, and falling with the sound 

Of roof-snow passing into pavement-slush — 

A fount of fire assuming various forms, 

A trident now, and now a spreading tree, 

A head-dress now, and now a devil-fish. 

But ever of one hue, the rare compound 

Of pink and orange found within the folds 

Of the pomegranate's dainty, filmy bloom. 

Or in the rounded lips of one among 

Ten thousand fair-haired, blue-eyed girls — 

A solid color without tint or shade. 

And though composed of seeming lambent fire, 

Emitting strangely no more light than sound — 

A daub and splotch of a pomegranate-red 

Upon a sable ground, and nothing more ; 

And there, against a vertically cut 

Half-cone, upon the margin of the lake, 

The surface setting in pulsating throbs, 

Until behold ! a miniature volcano 

Combining the phenomena of both 

Vesuvius and Halemaumau : an 

Eruptive show'r of lava falling on 

The half-cone on the shore, and a cascade 

Returning to the source from which it came. 



THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 185 

And SO the scene is ever varied and 
Disjoined, until behold ! the lava lake 
Is all aglow and twenty fountains play 
Within the Avondrous circle of its shores ! 
Oh, for the word to compass in its sound 
This seething, surging, spouting sea of fire ! 
It is a mighty maelstrom ladle-dipped 
From out the ocean caldron of the Sun ! 
Aye, Halemaumau is the orb of day 
Within the circuit of a half a mile ; 
And in my journey hither — to this lake 
Within the walls of Kilauea and 
The foam-fringed confines of Hawaii, — I, 
In philosophic fact, have visited 
The Earth, emerging from its primal floods, 
The Moon, a-cold beyond Poor Tom's degree, 
And the ensphered volcanic fire, the Sun ! 

glorious age of glass — of lens and prism, 
That purblind man, with comprehensive gaze, 
May see the far anear, the near afar. 
And poets and philosophers compound 
Their facts and fancies in resultant truth ! ^* 

Anon, the rubber of a cloudy night 
Erases all the Avorld save that wdthin 
The walls of Halemaumau, in my sight 
And hearing : lava-lighted crater-crags 
In-arching like the petals of a great 
Corolla, tinted 3'ellow, pink, and blue ; 
Thin clouds of water-gas, obscurely white 
And fumes of sulphur, as obscurely blue. 
Ascending from the circle of the lake. 
An incense from a thousand unseen censers; 
And, in the surface of the lava lake. 
The satin sable turned to velvet black. 
And the pomegranate red transmuted to 
X ' •• 



186 THE HEtL OF HALEMAUMAU. 

The glowing yellow hue of molten gold ; 
A fitful light diffusing frdm the founts, 
Illuming weirdly the volcanic void 
Without or shade or sheen : the only gleam 
Upon the velvet scum a shimmering 
Reflection from the vapor-clouds above ; 
Until, the periodic break-up come, 
The surface for a moment is a glare — , ■ 

A sunburst through a dark'ning tempest's rack, 
And then a sunset in a golden glamour. 

I sit upon a lava rock and watch 

The varying phases of the wondrous lake. 

Until the real passes from, my sight 

And the ideal enters in its stead : 

The thing a thought within my musing mind ; 

The fact a fancy in my reverie ; 

The world of wonders of the fire-abyss 

A filmy breath-blown bubble of the brain. 

I pass into the being of Macbeth, 
And lo ! in looking into Halemaumau, 
I look into the witches' caldron — see 
The eye of newt and toe of frog descend 
Into the seething hell-broth to compound 
The diabolic charm ; the while I hear, 
In the cascading of the fiery founts. 
The " bubble, bubble, toil and trouble " of 
The mystic mumbling of the midnight hags. 

Anon, I creep up to a pitfall's brink, 
Within the jungle of a Bengal vale, 
And through the broken reeds across the chasm 
Behold the livid black and yellow bands 
And glaring eyes of an emprisoned tiger — 
A beast that, startled at my coming, leaps 
From wall to wall so swift and fiercely that 
It seems, in my bewildered sight, to be 



THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 187 

Expanded to the compass of the pit; 
The-while I hear a low deep growl that shakes 
The mountain walls around me to their base. 

Anon, I enter Rome — Imperial Rome — 

And one among a hundred thousand press 

Into the Coliseum, and conduct 

Me to a seat, whence looking down I see, 

In the arena eighty feet below, 

A thousand Goth and Gallic Avarriors 

With sword and shield engage in battle strife ; 

To know nor pause nor end, until I see 

The flashing blades of steel ope founts of blood, 

And then the battle-field a sea of gore ; 

And hear a dying moan hushed in the cheer 

Of the encircling, surging, blood-crazed throng ! 

Anon, I listen to a murderer. 

Repentant, in the throe^ and dread of death. 

Recount the story of his awful deeds 

At midnight done with an unfeeling blade ; 

Until I seem to see, betwixt his ribs, 

The hell of Halemaumau in his heart — 

Its fires eternal to his sinful soul. 

Consuming yet consuming not for aye. 

Anon, I see the goddess Pele rise 

Amid the fountains of the fiery lake, 

A black-skinned, bloated, blood-shot, breastless 

hag ! 
Around her neck a lei " of leprous sores ; 
And in her hands a fire-charred newborn babe 
Torn from a fruitful mother's dripping dug 
And strangled in the hate of barrenness 
Unto all things that mate and multiply ; 
A hag so horrible in form and feature, 
A hag so terrible in aim and action, 
A hag so hellish in her head and heart, 



188 THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 

No eye can see nor fantasy conceive 

Save in the fire-formed Hell of Halemiumau ! 



* Originally published in 1885, at Honolulu, in the form of 
an octavo pamphlet under the title of A Visit in Verse to 
Halemaumau, and dedicated to His Majesty, Kalakaua, King 
of the Hawaiian Islands. 

^ Hawaii is pronounced conventionally as if spelled Hah- 
wye-ee, with the accent on the second syllable ; correctly 
Hah-wah-ee-ee. It is identical with the Hawa-iki of the 
Maoris of New Zealand, and signifies Little Java. 

•'* Kilauea is pronounced as if spelled Kee-low-ay-ah, with a 
slight accent on the first syllable and a strong on the third. It 
means in Hawaiian the Big Smoking Pit. 

Htilemaumau is pronounced as if spelled Hah-lay-mow- 
mow, with an accent on the first and third syllables. It signi- 
fies literally, House Everlasting, or figuratively, the Grave ; 
from the fact that a similar crater in approximately the same 
place has been regarded by the Hawaiians from time immemo- 
rial as a fit burial place for the bodies in whole or in part of 
their dead, in their worship of Pele — not the House of Ever- 
lasting Fire or Burning, as rendered by some. 

* Vestiges of the Molten Globe, as exhibited in the Figure 
of the Earth, Volcanic Action and PhysiographJ^ By William 
LowTHiAN Greex, Minister of Foreign Affairs to the King of 
the Sandwich Islands. Svo., pp. 59. London: Edward Stan- 
ford, 55 Charing Cross. 1875 

A synopsis of Mr. Green's theory is given also in I^a Sym- 
6trie sur le Globe Terrestre par A. de Lapparent, Profeseeur a 
1' Institut C-itholique de Paris. ( Ex trait de la Revue des Ques- 
tions Scientifiques, Janvier, 1882. ) Bruxelles: Alfred Vromant, 
Imprimeur-Editeur, 3 Rue de la Chapelle. 8vo., pp. 35. 

* Pele is pronounced as if spelled Pay-lay, with the stress 
on the first syllable. It signifies eimply Fire. Compare the 
lingering worship of the terrible goddess, as exemplified in 
the recent sacrifice of the PitixcEss Rltit, with that among the 
Mexicans of to-day for the feathered Serpent-god of their Aztec 
ancestors, as set forth in the lines hereinbefore headed. In 
THE Crrv OF Mexico. 

^ ]\I auna Laa ( pronounced as if spelled Mow-na Lo-a, ac- 
cented on the first syllable of each word, and signifying the 
Long Mountain ) is the largest in bulk of the volcanic cones of 



THE HELL OF HALEMAUMAU. 189 

Hawaii, its height being 13,650 feet above the level of the sea, 
or 155 less than that of Miuna Kea ( Kay-ah, signifying the 
White Mountain, ) and its base being coextensive with a 
great part of the island. Its crater-pit or calderon, called 
Mokuaweoweo, ( Mo-koo-ah-way-o-way-o, accented on the first, 
fourth, and sixth syllables, and signifying the Red Island, ) is 
elliptic in shape, its long diameter 13,000 feet and its short 8000, 
and its depth about 8D3 feet. Its eruptions, which occur at 
irregular intervals of three, four, seven, eight, and eleven years 
or so, are of the grandest proportions known, the volume of lava 
ejected, as estimated, ranging from seventeen to fifty billions of 
cubic feet. The last outburst occurred in 1880-1. 

'' The hird's-nest fern, Asplenium nidus. For the size of the 
specimen referred to, attest Mu. Charles N. Arnold, of Hilo, 
who cut it into four sections and sent it to Plis Majesty, Kixg 
Kalakaua. 

*The tree-ferns of Hawaii exceed in girth of trunk any I 
have ever seen in India and Brazil. I have seen higher, how- 
ever, among the foothills of the Himalayas, and in Australia. 
Scrubby, though they be in comparison with their ancestors of 
the fern-age of the earth's history, they are none the less mag- 
nificent trees, and truly may be classed among the leafy won- 
ders of the world. 

'Kanaka, used as a noun, a Hawaiian man, and, used as an 
adjective, Hawaiian in general. 

'"A kind of cranberry, Vaccinvam retlculatum. The fruit of 
this plant was considered sacred to Pele ;.and it was customary 
for (he Hawaiian?, before eating the same in the crater, to cast 
some of the b3rrie3 into the molten lava as an ofiering to her. 

^^ The description of the crater of Halemaumau is given as 
I beheld it during the afternoon and night of Saturday, the 
28th of February, 1885. F.very phenomenon is given as it ap- 
peared to me, not, however, in the sequence as reported in the 
poem, but as isolated from the Avorld of wonders before me at 
the time and carefully considered with a view to its accurate 
reproduction in spaech. I observed Avitli especial care, ( seek- 
ing confirmation from a number of ladies and gentlemen at 
my side, before recording a conclusion,) the various colors 
presented in the ever-varj'ing picture, since, it seemed to me, 
I had never se3n exactly the same hues in any painting of the 
volcano I had inspected. While, accordingly, the usual allow- 
ance might be made for lack of accuracy in a poetic descrip- 
tion, I should prefer that the metrical lines be considered prose 
and accepted as prosaic truth or subjected to the ordeal of the 



190 THE ship's lanterns. 

same. The steam or water-gas noted as rising from the rim 
and fractured scum of the crater and forming the cloud above, 
which, like a frosted lamp-shade, served to reflect the light 
from the molten lava and diffuse it throughout' the volcanic 
void, is believed to have come wholly from the atmosphere, 
either in the form of rain falling directly into and about the 
crater or that of moisture involved in the convection currents 
of the crater in the air and liquid lava, and not from the lava 
as a volcanic product. As it was raining at the time, and had 
been for several days previously, the amoimt of steam in the 
crater at the time I beheld it was doubtless in excess of that 
which usually is seen. 

^^ This flossy product of the volcano is called Pele's hair. 
A similar substance is produced by turning a jet of steam on 
the molten slag of a furnace. It is called by some slag-wool ; 
and it has been utilized to a small extent as a substitute for 
asbestos in the manufacture of a non-conducting covering for 
steam-pipes, etc. 

" If the modern method of investigation known as spec- 
trum analysis^ the glorious invention of Dr. David Altee, of 
Freeport, Pennsylvania — has made one thing a positive fact in 
the realm of science that before was questionable, it is that the 
sun and other stars are revolving spheres of molten matter, as 
like the liquid lake of Kilauea as a whole of infinite size may 
be to a finite part. 

^*Lei, (pronounced conventionally as if spelled lay,) a 
wreath or garland, one of the most common and characteristic 
ornaments of a Hawaiian woman. 



THE ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTIETH DE- 
GREE OF LONGITUDE. 



The line o'er which the earth looks east and west, 
A two-faced Janus for a verity. 



THE SHIP'S LANTERNS. 



The lanterns of a ship at night look like 
The glowing nose of Bardolph set against 
The glaring orbit of the Green-eyed Monster. 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOR! AHANA. 191 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA.' 



Thursday, 10th June, 1886, — a twelvemonth after the visit 
of the writer to the Terraces of Rotomahana and the publica- 
tion in Auckland, New Zealand, of the following description, 
prefaced by an admirable paper on their formation and volcan- 
ic environment, by Mr. Josiah Martin, F.G.S., etc., — the beau- 
tiful structures were involved in a superficial volcanic eruption 
and destroyed. 



From the Hawaiian Islands, south and west, 

Some twelve or thirteen hundred leagues, 

By steamer, to New Zealand. Yea, but where 

In space and what in substance is New Zealand ? 

A question to be asked by one and all. 

And answered ere I go another step. 

Conceive the surface of the sphere, the Earth, 

Divided into hemispheres, the one 

Encompassing the bulk of all the land, 

The other that of all the sea. Then will 

The centre of the hemisphere of land 

Be England in the North — Old England, and 

The centre of the hemisphere of water, 

New Zealand in the South — the New Sea Land. 

The New Sea Land, by some prophetic chance. 

So called by its discoverers, the Dutch ; 

And Aotearoa ^ by the natives — 

The Long White Land, another Albion ! 

The Britian of the South, in name and nature ! 

In size about the bigness of Great Britain ; 
In shape, an old and sole-less Qutcast boot: 
A rent between the foot and leg. Cook's Strait, 
Another 'tw^ixt the leg and straps, Foveaux', 
Dividing it into the Northern Isle, 



1^2 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 

The South or Middle Isle, and Stewart's Isle. 
The relics, haply, of a vanished world, 
As kinless as a meteoric crag 
New fall'n from space among the continents. 
The country of the earthquake^ and volcano;* 
The country of the sea-gorge ^ and the glacier ; ^ 
The country of the geyser '' and the terrace ; * 
The country of the pounamu,® or greenstone ; 
The country of the wood-in-worm awhUto ; ^" 
The country of the ponga" and the nikau;*^ 
The country of the rata^^ and the kauri ;^* 
The country of the toke^^ and tu'tara/® 
The country of the kakapo " and kea ; ^* 
The country of the kiwi ^* and the moa ; ^^ 
The country of the kuri^^ and the Maori ;^^ 
I : The country of the moko ^^ and the mere ; ^* 
The country of the Tiki ^^ and the tapu ; ^® 
The Wonderland beneath the Southern Cross! 

I enter a great cove, and go ashore 

At Auckland, chief among the cities of 

The present and the future of New Zealand. 

Set strangely on a nnrroAv neck of land 

Betwixt two seas, among two score or more 

Of dead volcano cones, about as big 

Beside Vesuvius, as that by jEtna — 

Two score or more of possibilities 

Of making some day Auckland a Pompeii ! 

From Auckland, then, south, eight-and>fifty 

leagues, 
B}' rail, coach, whale-boat, shanksmare, and canoe, 
I jog on to the Terraces, the White 
And Pink of Rotomahana : ^^ the chief 
Of all the Avonders of New Zealand : two 
Compoundings and embodiments of the 
Old elements, fire, water, earth, and air. 
As similar and yet dissimilar, 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA- 193 

And supplemental each unto the other 

To form a perfect whole, as man and woman, 

Their counterparts in an organic form : 

Te Tarata,^® the Maoris call the one : ; 

The Ridges — ridge-on-ridge, or Terraces; 

The other, Te Otukaptiarangi : ^ 

The Fountain of the Evening Clouds of Heaven. 

I visit first the White; and, book in hand,, 

As the phenomena of my environment 

Become as, many facts, and these same fa'cts 

Evolve into and interblend with fancies — 

As in the compound art-productions of 

The Japanese, the real and ideal — 

I jot them down, in whatsoever words, : 

Signg, symbols, figures, and similitudes. 

Come first as willing slaves to do my bidding — 

Archaic imps and hyphen-joined hobgoblins, 

Outlandish ogres and dissonant dwarfs. 

Weird witch and warlock wordings, graveyard 

ghosts. 
And eldritch elves of echoes from the wilds 
Of Maori-land : Te Aotearoa — 
The Long White Land : the Island-fish of Maui.^" 

Conceive, a vast volcanic energy 
Diffused and dissipated in a belt 
Or network of telluric rents and fissures, 
A hundred miles or so in Avidth, across 
The instep of the boot-shaped land, from sea 
To sea : in its expression ranging from 
A fire-volcano proper, Tongariro, 
Through seething lakes of sulphur, geyser-founts, 
Steam hells and horns innumerable, down 
To Maori boiling-pots and steaming-pits — 
To Maori warming-pans and coddling-beds — ^^ 
To Maori morning, noon, and midnight baths — 
Y 



194 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA, 

As in the towns of Wh4karewar6wa, 

Ohinemtitu, and elsewhere : the realm 

Of the fire-goddess Mahuika.^'^ Now, 

Within the centre of this wonder-world, 

Conceive a mount, two hundred feet in height, 

Beside a lakelet, half a mile in width ; 

The mountain of acidic rocks and earths, 

Obsidian and rotten rhyolite — 

Or laterite, as doctors of all kinds 

Will differ ; clad with scrubby manuka — ^* 

A kind of myrtle, heather-like in form. 

And of a dark-green hue — club-moss and ferns ; 

And plumed with puffs of steam at many points : 

The kites, belike, of mythic Whakatau ; ^* 

The lakelet fringed with raupo, ^" fern, and sedge, 

And bristling with the tap'ring spears of rush ; 

O'erflown, o'erswam, and circled round with ducks, 

Pink-legged stilts and dark-blue water-hens : 

The Warm Lake, Rotomahana. 

Upon the westward aspect of the mount, 
About a hundred feet above the lake, 
A crater, thirty yards or more across. 
Surrounded, on the north and east and south. 
With wet and steaming walls of white and pink 
And red acidic earths, with here and there 
A bush of manuka or bit of fern. 
A crater whence afar is seen a cloud 
Of steam arising half a mile or more : 
The smoke, belike, that coming from the jar 
Found and unsealed by the poor fishermian. 
Became the genii of the Eastern tale — 
Nay, rather, the soul-sighing of fond Papa 
Made visible in its ascent to Rangi, 
According to the myth of Earth and Heaven.'® 

A crater whence anear is seen a well 
Of ever boiling water, heated by 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 195 

Volcanic fires below : a fountain, now, 

With scarce a ripple on its surface, and . 

Of such an exquisite and radiant blue, 

That, changing with the varying light and shade. 

Beneath its veil of bluish -tinted steam. 

It seems to be the central gushing source 

Of all the azures of the earth, between 

The pale eyes of a Swedish newborn babe 

And the dark plumage of the peacock's neck. 

Anon, responsive to a southern gale, 

A whirlpool, with a deep descending swirl. 

Sucking itself into the earth below, 

Full fathoms five, or haply, many more, 

With a cavernous, self-engulfing growl — 

A maelstrom nautilus withdrawn into 

The inmost chamber of its pearly shell. 

Revealing in the hollow of its bowl 

A lining of the purest silica, 

In crystal, sponge-like masses, soft and thick, 

And white and lustrous as Andean snow : 

A pure precipitate, enveloping, 

As with celestial garbs, the forms of moths 

And dragonflies, caught in the steam and drowned, 

And whatsoe'er falls into it by chance. 

Revealing also in a little vale 

A lakelet of transcendent loveliness : 

A sapphire deliquescent into dew 

Within a basin of the flowers of flint : 

The eye of maidenhood, awaking from 

The first of fond love dreams, dissolved in tears. 

Anon (the boiling water of the well 

Returning, with the veering of the wind, 

And rising with a fierce, appalling roar, ) 

A geyser, casting up a spire of water 

Two hundred feet above the crater rim. 

Or twice the height of the surrounding mount : 

A spire as it ascends, a spectacle, 

An ultimatum of sublimity ! 



196 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 

A dazzling point of light, above a grey, 
Opaque columnar mass, enveloped in 
A fast-pursuing, thick'ning cloud of steam 
Of lustrous whiteness with prismatic hues ; 
Until, the acme of its action reached, 
The point of dazzling light dissolves in the 
Upcoming cloud of iridescent steam ; 
The column spreads into a sparkling spray 
And shower, falling back into the well ; 
The while, the cloud above, as if upcast 
Against a plate of glass, spreads far and wide. 
Until transmuted into the unseen. 
The circumambient empyrean ! 
This twice or thrice, until the weight of water 
Within the crater balances the force 
Impelling from the unknown depth below, 
And then a seething sapphire fount again. 

A wondrous well of water and as well 
A well of wondrous water, holding in 
Solution many earthy substances : 
A lithic lymph : an inorganic ichor : 
A min'ral magma, milk, or menstruum : 
A cosmic chyme or chyle : a confluent 
Conglomerate — Nay, nay, a water-womb. 
Whence whatsoever issues from it in 
The form of rock — a lithic progeny 
Yclept among the wise silicious sinter. 
Including geyserite and hydrophane 
And hyalite, and others — is akin. 
As cousins-german of the human race, 
To many of the fairest gems of earth, 
Jade, jasper, onyx, lapis lazuli, 
Sard, catseye, agate, topaz, chrysoprase, 
True emerald or beryl, tourmaline. 
Rock-crystal, citrine, opal, amethyst, 
Chalcedony, carnelian, rose-quartz, 
Schoerl, cairngorm, siderite, and hyacinth ; 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 197 

As well, with the more homely and familiar 
Quartz, quartzose, hornstone, touchstone, flint and 

chert ; 
And so allied, in various degrees, 
With the volcanic sept of sinters from 
Basaltic to obsidian, or glass ; 
In fine, in an affinity in some 

Degree with most of the mankind of min'rals — 
The elemental silicon the blood 
Of a telluric Shem uniting all. 

The overflow escaping toward the west, 

Within the gap in the encircling walls. 

Some five-and-twenty yards in width, around 

A central craggy islet — Lucy's Isle — *® 

Of black volcanic glass and laterite, 

With fern and club-moss clad : in profile like 

A couchant lion in a Turkish bath, 

Or an Egyptian sphinx in London fog. 

Accessible betimes, I go upon this isle. 

And lo ! an aureole about my head — 

My sinful head — in shadow on the steam 

Above the sapphire caldron ; and, above 

The halo, overspreading half the pool, 

A radiant arch of Avhite — a rainbow blanched — 

Or lunar brugh intensified in brightness. 

And now, returning to the overflow — 
This, in descending to the lake below, 
Adown a slope two hundred yards or more. 
Outspreading like a crushed and broken fan 
And, in outspreading like a crumpled fan. 
Decreasing in caloric from steam-hot. 
Above the boiling-point, ^ to fish-blood cold ; 
And in decreasing thus in temper'ture. 
Depositing by dissolution all 
The earthy substances contained in it 
In a composite rock-like mass of sinter, 



198 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 

Cream-white when dripping wet, snow-white when 

dry, 
With tints of yellow, salmon, pink, and brown ; 
And in depositing its earthy matters thus, 
O'erlaying and encrusting everything 
Within its course, steep, shelf, log, limb and leaf; 
And forming, with the change of circumstance, 
Of wave, wind, angle, area and arc, 
A series of the fairest earthy forms 
Extending over acres, possibly 
Without a parallel in the wide world. 

Here, round the crater mouth, a beveled lip 
Projecting inward as it has been formed 
By deposition in the course of years ; 
Contracting the great outlet in a measure 
And threatening in time to close it wholly — 
And kill, of course, the geyser by a kind 
Of eburnation or ossification. 

Here, in the summit shallow steaming pools 

( As seen from Lucy's Isle with best effect, ) 

A number of compressed spheroidal masses 

All bristling with acicular accretions, 

Like cushions made of hoar-frost : great sea-eggs 

Converted into little isles of coral : 

Fijian wigs well limed and crystallized : 

Or misty moons submerged and petrified : 

Or what you will — the fretful porcupine 

Of Shakespeare that has suffered a sea-change 

Into a something rich and strange, indeed ! 

Here ( looking downward from a central point, ) 

A myriad of overflowing cups, 

In shape, like bivalve shells — specifically 

Tridacna gigas — set in rows around 

About, and on successive scalloped shelves, 

Down to the level of the rush-speared lake ; 



THE TERRACES OP ROTOMAHANA. 199 

In size, decreasing — generally — from 
A central and extended, broken ridge, 
Around its variable steeps and slopes, 
From Caracalla's marble swimming-pools, 
To Chinese porcelain tea and coffee cups ; 
And in their composition on inspection, 
With laminated rims, composed of scales 
Upturning like the petals of a rose 
Unfolding into bloom, and set within 
With dainty efflorescent increments, 
Like granulated Afric ivory. 
The color of the water in these cups, 
A series of peculiar cloudy blues, 
Extending from the opalescent tinge 
Of the long-buried tear-tubes of Pompeii, 
To the opaque hue of the turquoise-beads 
Worn by the dusky natives of Nepaul. 

Here, fretted, stalactitic underhangings, 
Beneath the rounded rim of a great cup, 
O'erlapping and depending full a fathom, 
Like icicle on icicle o'erforming 
In the alternate night-cold and day-warmth 
Of lagging winter lapsing into spring ; 
Or like a white silk tasseled pall upon 
A monarch's catafalque, fold after fold, 
Compounding in a heavy swell and roll 
And overhanging in a fleecy fringe — 
And dripping with warm water drops in the 
Similitude of a fond people's tears. 
And under and behind this dripping fringe, 
A wall thick set with sinter tubercles. 
Ranging in size from millet-seed to cherries : 
A windrow of new fallen summer hail : 
A Turkish saddle studded o'er with cowries : 
A shield embossed with opal-headed nails : 
A girdle beaded round with precious pearls : 
A fantasy of nacre and shagreen : 



200 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 

Or barracouta-teeth and barley-corn. 

Here, lace-like intricacies, laps and folds, 

-Extending over half an acre, like 

A wrinkled shawl as fine as ever knit 

By Flemish dames for Spanish royalty ; 

Or — to a surgeon — the epiploon : 

The superficial fascia of the muscles : 

Or the arachnoid membrane of the brain ; 

Or like — how things of undefinable 

Perfection fire the fancy to invention ! — ■ 

The glass-sponge of Japan strewn o'er a hill ; 

The finest filamentous feathers of 

The bird of Paradise commingled with 

A cataract of cream-chalcedony ; 

The sumauma's seed-silk ^® from Brazil 

Wrought in the moonlight by the water-elves 

And sprites into a bridal-veil for Undine ; . , 

The cobwebs of a Pennsylvania mead 

At sunrise in September, white with dew, 

Tenting the field for fairy warriors ; 

The dreams of Hindu metaphysicists 

For ages turned into a maze of niarble! 

And here a yellow down : organic growth 

Or inorganic stain, I know not what : 

A filmy, fulvous fringe, as fine and fair 

As that which clothes the new-born mullein-leaf. 

Here, myrtle-branch and twig and leaf and fruit, 
Fern-frond and club-moss spray o'erwhelmed. 
Enshrouded and entombed in pearl and coral : 
The fact evolved into a fantasy 
As in a philosophic poet's dream. 

Here, steep succeeding steep encrusted, like 

As many frozen cataracts in winter: 

The tepid water o'er the fretted mass 

Descending in thin, lustrous, throbbing wavelets. 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 201 

Like shimm'ring moonlight on a breeze-fanned 

billow : 
Or, the remembrance in a morning dream 
Of a fair palpitating bosom seen 
With downcast eyes through filmy folds of lace 
In the embracing of a midnight waltz. 

Here, fungus-like concretions, bringing back 
To mind the strange white filmy growths beheld 
By lamplight in a Pennsylvania coal-pit. 

Here, in a shallow pool, a seeming scum 
Resolving, on inspection close at hand, 
Into a dainty miniature atoll — 
A mimic coral isle with central lake 
As fair as ever fancied in the dream 
Of boyhood on an old beach-comber's knee, 
Nid-nodding o'er the oft-repeated tale 
Of the fair islets of the great South Sea. 

Here, mushroom-like concretions — seeming huts 
For water-elves and fairies to inhabit. 

Here, iron stains imparting to the sinter 
The hue of human flesh — converting in 
An instant all the rounded rims of the 
Infinity of dripping cups into 
As many rounded interlacing limbs — 
Imparting to the sinter life and love, 
As the environment of crimson velvet 
To Dannecker's cold marble Ariadne. 

Here, umber stains and chocolate, below 
The grandest of the steaming bathing-pools. 
And here, what sinter surgery is this ? 
A rupture in the rim of the great pool 
Through which the water pours, is healing up 
Z 



202 THE TEfRRACfiS OF ROToMAilAITA. 

ArounH, about, within, withoiit, as if endowed, in 

fact. 
With an organic poW'i: of reparation ^^ 
The life-blood that has built the woildrous falbric 
Rebuilding and restoring it ill tMii ! ' ' ' ' ■ 

And here, a craggy rock, of mottled brown 
And red and white, pr6jecting froni a ledge 
Of sinter, like the head df a great liionster. 
Awaking and upirising in the midst 
Of the Avorld's wonder in bewilderment — 
A craggy rock yclept the Wild Boar's Head. 

And here, a wondrous series^ shelf on shelf 

Of conjugations of cOnctetion, or, 

Of demilunes of deposition, like 

A fossil forest full of baskiilg boas 

In endless coils and curvings, limb on limb ; 

Or a dead sea of ammonites — Nay, like 

An ancient Greek gymnasium in gypsum ; 

Or cycloid cornice of cathedral foils, 

Tre-, quatre-, ciiique-, a;nd iilille- compounding — 

Nay, 
A chiliad of blessed basin bracts 
On temple walls — Na}^, swallow-nests of sea-foam 
Accrete to overhanging chalky Cliffs ; 
Or a compounding of opossum-pouch 
In ring and wrinkle round and rotind, in lay'r 
And lapping up and down — in marble, a 
Marsupiatal Ephesus -Diana! — 
The limpid. Opalescent levels of 
These chalices of chert-precipitation, 
A fantasy of isothermal lines ! 

Here, interaxial, isthmic buttresses 

And bonds, between the bases of the bowls, 

Striated, stalagmitic, ostracoid : 

The whirligig of time, that, soon or late, 



Turns aU, things topsy-t^yyy, here, inverting 
The sage^Qld saw about the constant drip. 

Here, green and yellow stains: perhaps a mould 

Upon the Avails but seldom wet with water. 

And here more catkined, bearded, rounded rims, 

Projecting like the fleecy flanks of beasts 

Caught in a mount or winter storm of sleet : 

The llama and alpaca of the Andes; 

The sheep cind yak of the Himalayas ; : 

The bighorn and the grizzly of the Rockies -^^^ 

The largest masses in the likeness of 

The wool-clad mammoth and rhi^oceroa 

Encased in ice on, Lena's frozep shore. 

And under and behipd the, seeming flank 

Of the enormous beast, another wall 

Of tendon-white, adnascent mammillations ; 

J^nameled nodes : like pearl-corn on the cob. 

Here, isles of manuka, dub-moss, and fern, , 
Within the sea of sinter spreading wide 
As it descends the hill-side to the lake., 

And here, below the craggy Wild Boar's Head, 
A series of cold water pools, apart 
Somewhat from all above them and around; 
Their rims decayed, streaked, mottled, smooth ; 
The water in them still, a turquoise blue. 
In all save one; in the exception, pink — : 
As pink as an albino rabbit's eyes. 
A series of cold water pools, perhaps 
The product of a geyser-fount between 
Them and the Wild Boar's Head, but now occlu- 
ded, 
^tripped for a bath, I step put iptp ope 
And sink into an opze pf gilicates 
Up to nay wjaist — an opze as soft and cold 
As if composed pf jelly-fi^h and frpg-?pawn : 



204 THE TERE ACES OF ROTOMAHAN'A. 

A bath to be remembered with an ugh ! 
And then a shudder, to my dying day. 

And here, upon the margin of the lake 

( Where its warm water finds an outlet in 

A breast-deep streamlet to the lake below — 

Lake Tarawera, or the Hot Ridge Lake, ) 

The lowest level of the wonderful 

Formation, overflown with tepid water. 

Filled with a myriad of little larvae — 

Belike, the grub of the annoying sand -fly ; 

If so, long life and tapeworm appetites 

Unto the birds that dine upon them daily ! — 

A plane of rotten, dirty, treach'rous sinter 

Upon a spongy bog of unknown depth. 

A pioneering staff within my hand 

Descends an ell or more, as if in paste. 

Soft-soap, or paper-pulp, and stays my steps. 

A plane of sinter, when compared with that 

Descending from the geyser crater-rim. 

As a long train of silk, smirched in the mud 

Of a street-crossing, to the cataract 

Of flounces, furbelows, and lace, above, 

In the perfection of their purity. 

A plane, whence, turning back and looking up. 

The whole formation, from the base to summit, 

Is seen, encompassed in a single view : 

The rims of the infinity of cups. 

Uprising one above the other, like 

The steps in ruin of a pyramid 

Of water-dripping, creamy, dreamy, marble. 

thou sublimity of quartz and chert ! 

Thou, marvelous mirage in solid crystal ! 

Thou, morganatic fata fixed in flint ! 

Cellini's concepts in chalcedony ! 

The poetry of Petrarch in fire-opal ! 

Hold ! hold ! there is a world of wonders yet 



THE TERRACES OP ROTOMAHANA. 205 

To be involved before erupting into 
Ideal and abstract extravagances. 

Adjunct and accessory to the White, 

Conceive, in the succession I behold them, 

Three little boiling springs, surrounded each 

With a low ring or crater-cone of sinter : 

In size, three whelks beside a Greenland whale. 

Next, two great boiling wells, the one some ten, 

The other twenty feet in width and depth, 

In dashing, splashing, lashing ebullition. 

As if involving, one, within its hold, 

A typic Washoe zephyr, and the other, 

A T'erra-del-Fuego williewaw. 

In rabid rage and ranc'rous rivalry ! 

Or one, the Maori god of storms, Tawhiri,*" 

The other, fearful Tinentiitepo," 

The goddess of destruction, Darkness, Death. 

Between these walls, a narrow slippy path 
Of white and pinkish slimy laterite — 
A rotten bridge between two boiling hells 
Sufficient to appal a sinner surely ! 
A few steps further on, a roaring steam-horn ; 
And then a geyser in incessant action, 
Upcasting solid cones, explosive bombs. 
Divergent plumes, and overarching tree-ferns 
Of splashing, sputt'ring, steaming boiling water. 
From ten to thirty feet in height, or more : 
As if incorporating in itself 
A score or more of spouting whales in sport ! 
The basin rim of this superb cascade 
Encrusted with a dark brown flinty sinter, 
Thickset with upright papillary points, 
Suggesting tripe and land and water urchins. 

A chain beyond, a score of boiling springs ; 
And then another terrace-forming caldron — 



206 ' THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA, 

A caldron heart-shaped, fifteen feet in length, 
By ten or twelve in width, the sinter rim 
Projecting inward in symmetric knobs 
Approximately of one size and shape, 
Like little buttons turned on big, of horn, 
Or garden-snails arranged in single file. 

And further on, some forty feet or more 

Above the level of the tepid lake. 

The crater of a quondam boiling lake, 

Now filled with ooze and mud, containing scores: 

Of simm'ring pools of milky unctuous mud ; 

The ripples forming wondrous arabesques 

Of oily dark brown on a ground of grey ; 

And mimic miniatures in mud and mire , 

Of Kilauea and Vesuvius. 

In one, steam-bubbles of tenacious paste 

Uprising, bursting, and collapsing in 

A series of such shapes as to excite 

To mirth and laughter rather than to wonder — 

Cups, saucers, plates and bowls, in May -day sport ; 

Buns, pancakes, rolls, and waffles on a spree ; 

Wens, goitres, bumps, and mumps, in merry mask ; 

Swelled katzenjammer heads; and heaving hearts 

That break and heal and heave and break again, 

As if in satire of humanity ; 

And in another, a peculiar paste 

The Maoris eat of, taking each his peck, 

Prescribed to one and all by the old saw, 

Without division or dilution boldly. 

Touching my tongue-tip to a steaming stickful, 

I taste a chalky, acid substance, and 

My appetite is satisfied at once : 

De gustibus noyi disptitandum, truly ! 

And here, a lakelet of opaque green water -=- 

A pool, belike, of melted greenstone meres. 

The wondrous two-edged war-sword of the Maoris. 



THE TEREACES OP ROTOMAHANA. 207 

And see! uprising from the hills around, 
A thousand jets of vapor : one and all, 
Like Tangotango, the celestial maid, 
With her first-born of earth upon her back, 
Uprising from the ridge-pole of Tawhaki, 
Dissolving and evanishing in ether ! *^ 

Proceeding, now, in a canoe across 

The Warm Lake, Rotomahana, 

I visit and inspect the second of 

The wondrous Terraces, the Pink: unto 

The White, the man, the supplemental woman. 

Conceive a similar causation arid 
Effect to those belonging to the White : 
A mount beside 9. lake ; a geyser-crater 
Upon the lake-side half-way up the steep ; 
A cloud of steam uprising constantly ; 
A sinter flange and lining to the caldron ; 
A sapphire depth of transcendental beauty ; 
The overflowing water holding in 
Solution many earthy substances, 
And losing them, on cooling, as it spreads 
And trickles down the hillside to the lake ; 
Upbuilding in succession, in its course, 
Cups, saucers, basins, bowls, and bathing-pools, 
Of various swallow-nest and chamoid shapes, 
"Containing such a spectral series of 
Cerulean tints, as if they held in them 
Decoctions and dilutions of the sum 
Of all the azures of the sea and sky ; 
The mounts of Moab seen at dawn across 
The Dead Sea from the heights of Olivet ; 
The ageratum fields of Mexico ; 
The Morpho-buttevflies of Amazon ; 
The columns sheathed with lapis lazuli 
Around the chapel altars of the Kremlin ; 
The pottery of Old Japan arid China; 



208 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA- 

The tassel of the scarlet cap of Tunis ; 

The mantle of the Marys of Murillo ; 

The starlit field of Freedom's Flag — Enough, 

The opal, turquoise, and forget-me-not 

Pervading and predominant in all ; 

And shelves or terraces ; and there an end. 

The likeness ceasing with the general. 

Conceive, now, to encompass the details 
Of difference — conceive the whole reduced 
In size a fourth : in summit caldron, height 
Above the lake, and length and spread of flow ; 
The water in the caldron boiling gently ; 
The flange projecting farther to the centre; 
The sinter in two forms ; an under, old, 
And crystalline deposit, like the white — 
The record of the geyser's early action ; 
And over this a new precipitation, 
Vitrescent and slow-forming, without crystals, 
As spaooth as cut and polished alabaster, 
And in its color pink : a pearly pink. 
Like that Avithin the mouth of many shells — 
The Stromhus pugilis, especially ; 
Or that of coral from the Middle Sea ; 
Or that within the dew-bathed bosom of 
An op'ning salmon-tinted tea-rose ; or. 
The lining of the lips of sucking babes — 
A fantasy of ruby and enamel ; 
Unhappily, howe'er, with many stains 
Of graphite in the names of idiots 
And fools, imperishable underneath 
The everforming and translucent sinter — 
With stains as well, but less objectionable, 
Of charcoal, from the burning bush around. 
Of soil and sfilphur : mottled, but not marred ; 
The rounded rims of the o'erflowing cups 
More lip- and limb-like : giving to a bath 
Within the steaming turquoise-colored pools 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 209 

A sense of love and luxury beyond 

The rapture of a Persian poet's dream : 

A dip into the morning dew within 

The ruby-tinted chalice of a rose 

Were but the thousandth tithing of the bliss 

Enjoyed within these wondrous warm and smooth, 

Delicious — nay, delirious sinter pools! 

Enough ! The boat awaits ! Come ! come ! I hear. 
Oh, shall I kiss these love-lips never more ? 
Nor press this bosom to mine own again ? 
Nor feel this warm breath intergasp with mine ? 
Oh, must I leave the arms of this fond woman ? 
Oh, must I leave this land of life and love? 
Adieu, thou rapture of my soul, for aye ! 
Thy fond forget-me-nots not voiced in vain ! 

The prow of the unfeeling log canoe 
Divides the rushes in its course, returning, 
Across the Warm Lake, to its sedge-fringed outlet. 
On, on, until Te Tarata, the White, 
Appears in startling splendor, rousing me 
From the reaction of ecstatic bliss. 

The foreground of the picture, a canoe. 
Among the rushes in the shallow lake ; 
Uprising from the lake, six water-hens ; 
Along the shoreline, two pink-legged stilts ; 
The centre, the White Terrace : step on step : 
Up, up, and round and round, from base to sum- 
mit ; 
Above the summit and the upper steps. 
Great clouds of vapor rising to the sky. 
Commingling with a rain cloud in the east — 
A fitting background, dark, chaotic, cold ; 
Around the summit, glimpses of the mount 
That girds the three-fourths of the boiling caldron : 
2A 



210 THE TERRACES OP ROTOMAHANA. 

Faint streaks of white and pink and purple earths. 

And dark green spots of manuka and fern ;, 

Against the terrace, ipount, and rising steam, 

A cone of vivifying, gleaming light, 

Projecting from a sinking sun behind me ; , 

And over all, by the most happy chance, 

A double rainbow of the rarest splendor : 

The whole, a foncy of the elements ! 

A dream composed of fire, earth, air and water I 

A dream within the cosmic brain of God ! 

Within the current of the outlet stream, 

The boat glides swiftly on, and soon — too soon 

The picture passes from my sight, but not — 

Not from my mem'ry and imagination. 

As man and AVoman are involved in Man, 

The images of both the White and Pink, 

The mnn and Avoman, interblend in one, 

A terrace of ideal form and color 

Combining the perfections of the twain 

In a harmonious, beauteous, Avondrous whole. 

The Terrace of Enchantment of NeAv Zealand. 

The Terrace of Enchantment — Aye, that once 
Conceived within the mind takes to itself 
The myriads untold of things and thoughts 
Within the Avorlds of foct and fancy, Avith 
The waving of a Avand, the scripture of 
A circle, or the mouthing of a Avord — 
Resolves, rebuilds, contracts, expands, amends; 
Moulds space and time ; and gives to things unseen, 
Unheard, unfelt, the qualities of things 
Around about us in the Avorld of fact; 
To airy musings and imaginirigs 
A firm foundation, fixity, and form ; 
To desert dreams, an oasis of life ; 
To nothingness, length, breadth, and depth and 
thickness. 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 21.1 

By chance, in reverie, I roam again 

Among the Chagtai tombs of Hindustan, 

And stand in an ecstatic aAve before 

The Taj Mahal, the Tomb of Mumtaz Begum. 

And lo ! wrought by the Terrace of Enchantment, 

I see the wondrous mausoleum set 

Upon a mountain-height; then melted in 

The Avaters of its fountains, and adown 

The mountain poured ; and, strangely, in its ruin, 

Retaining all the beauty of its being : 

The creamy whiteness of its marble walls ; 

The curve of arch and dome and minaret ; 

The plane and parallel of floor and Avail ; 

The chisled. tracery and arabesque; 

The inlaid ornamental Persian script ; 

The precious stones set in the lace-like screen ; 

The sheen and glamour of the polished slabs ; 

And over all the tint of all the roses 

Of the embowered acres of the tomb: 

The Taj dissolved indeed, but evermore 

Indissoluble in its being with 

The Terrace of Enchantment of New Zealand. 

Anon, aboard the good ship " Patterson," ^' 
I pass again into Magellan's straits. 
And see, within the glinting of the sun 
Through parting rack above the northern heights, 
A glacier coming o'er the mountains from 
The cloud-swept south — a flood of lustrous white ; 
The Avhile, the willicAvaAvs descending sweep 
And SAvirl the surface of the swelling seas 
Into a maze of lace-like foam and spindrift. 
Anon, the sun descends and night sets in — 
A night opaquely dark — until the clouds 
Drift broken by, and lo ! a crimson light, 
Diffusing from the southern pole, o'erspreads 
The sky, the mountains, and the storm-swept 
waves. 



^12 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 

And presto 1 as I con these several scenes, 
The Terrace of Enchantment takes them up, 
The glacier-flood, the foam, and austral light, 
And turns them in a trice into itself! 

Anon, I sleep again beneath the sky — 
The blue silk counterpane — of Italy, 
And dream a dream of Michael Angelo : 
Of marble simulating man and woman ; 
Of man and woman simulating marble ; 
Of great cathedral piles, plinth, column, dome. 
And frieze with human forms in high relief — 
All in confusion and obscurity, 
Commingled with the waters of the Arno. 
Till presto ! in the twinkling of an eye. 
Behold the chaos and the darkness gone. 
And all the marble and the human forms, 
The blue silk sky and waters of the Arno, 
Combined within the Terrace of Enchantment ! 

Anon, within an arbor overgrown 

With perfumed honeysuckle, painted rose. 

And pendant fuchsia : moonlight streaming 

through 
The meshes of the interlacing stems 
And partings of the overlapping leaves: 
A woman — one among the millions of 
The earth in countless eons — ■ in my arms : 
I hear a symphony of Mendelssohn 
Borne half a mile across a placid lake ; 
And as I hear, the sounds, the scents, the sweets 
Of my surroundings, all becoming sights, 
I see, before my tongue can tell the word. 
The music, moonlight, flow'rs, and love combined 
In the incomparable radiant Terrace! 

Anon, I see Anacreon arise 

From the entombment of the centuries, 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOI^AHANA. 213 

And hear him sing his songs of wine and woman ; 
And, quick as thought, in the similitude 
Of the rare Terrace, lo ! I see these songs 
Descend from lip to lip, and cup to cup. 
In a wide-spreading and divergent course, 
Adown the mountain steep of ages to 
The yielding ooze, the present, at its base. 

Anon, I see a nameless man or god, 

Involving man and woman in perfection, 

Come into being, live a holy life. 

And pass away : his face and form unlimned 

By art : no Avork of his in brick or brass 

Remaining : yet, behind him leaving in 

The mom'ry of mankind a recollection. 

In shapeless, vague, chaotic, dreamlike thought, 

Of every instant of his years on earth — 

Of ever}'- heart-beat of his holiness. 

Oh, for the Avord to shape Avithin the sight 

This recollection of ten thousand parts 

In a complete and perfect god-like Avhole ! 

Give spot and compass to ubiquity ; 

Create a universe anew from chaos ; 

And cr3^stallize a limitless mirage 

Into a mountain fixity, a pearl 

And marble purity, a peerless form, 

And. interfusing and pervading all, 

The hue and heart-beat of humanity ! 

O blest interposition of the Terrace — 

The Terrace of Enchantment of New Zealand ! 

Fulfilling in thy form and function all 

The requisites of this composite symbol ! 

His blood, thy Avondrous Avell of Avondrous water, 

Upgushing to a mountain height, and then 

Descending to the world-encircling sea ; 

His brain and its pure thoughts, thy unskuUed 

spheres 
And sunlit labyrinths of seeming coral ; 



214 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 

His lips and uttered words, thy myriad 

Of overflowing cups of alabaster ; 

His arms, and their infolding to his breast 

In universal sympathy and love. 

Thy thousand interlocking rounded rims ; 

His influence, extending far and wide. 

Involving all, the highest and the lowest, 

For ages past and ages yet to come, 

Thy flood in its outpouring and descent, 

And sinter deposition over all, 

Iniparting purity to things impure, 

The lustrous hues- of gems to mud and mire, 

The beauty of the living to the dead ; 

His very being, soul and body, thine. 

Involving Earth, and j^et reflecting Heaven ! 

Such are the Terraces, the White and Pink, 

Of Rotomahana, in fact and fancy : 

Within the water-world, the monument 

Of earth that marks for man its geyser-centre ; 

Within the world beneath the Cross in Heaven, 

The sign and symbol of the Christ on Earth. 



* Originally piibliphed in the form of an octavo pamphlet 
in 1885 at Auckland, NeAV Zealand, nnder the title of Fact and 
Fancy ix Ni:w Zealand. The TEunACES op Eotojiaiiana : A 
Poem, by Fhank Cowan. To which is j^refixed a Paper en 
Geyser Eruptions and Terrace Formations, by .Tosiaii Mar- 
tin, F.G.S. Sub.eequently, a pecond edition was published by 
Mr. M.v»tin, in quarto, interfoliated with photograi)hic views of 
the Terraces and neighboring geyser.'^, etc. Both editions were 
dedicated to Sir George Grey, K.C.B., "a eoldier, statesman, 
and scholar, whose biography is part of the honorable hiftory 
for half a centurj' of the tri-partite division of the Britieh Col- 
onies of the Southern Hemisphere." 

* AoTEAROA : Literally a-o, world, nniverre, or, a part for the 
whole, land ; te-a, white ; and ro-a, long. By the tir.'^t of the 
Maoris to come to New Zealand from their traditional father- 
land Hawaiki, a compound of the first two words Avas given to 
the Great Barrier Island, off the northeast coast of the North 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOlilAHAlifA. 215 

Island, from its appaarence, involved in white clotids, as they 
approached it; the compound of the three was afterward given 
to the mainland, or properly, to that part of New Zealand, 
which is c'alled North li-land. Curiously, too, while I recoid for 
the first time the correspondence in signification between Aotea 
and Albion, in its commonly accepted derivation, I may note 
here another iota of seeming happy prophecy in the native 
name of New Zealand to the fite it has found. The word te-a 
belongs to the sacerdotal vocabulary of the Maoris; and, signi- 
fying white especially in its relation to other human colors or 
complexions, was applied always with a mvf-tic, (Special, sacred, 
sjanbolic, or double meaning. While, accordingly, Aotea is 
generally spaaking a AVhite Land, or a second Albion, it is es- 
pecially and essentially a "White Man's Land : and so may it be 
in the fullest sense of the words, is my earnest jirayer. 

■^ A noteworthy illustration of the involution of the seismic 
environment of New Zealand by the Maoris is found in the 
I-egend of the Maiden of IJotorua. It occurs in the description 
of the agitation of the heroine, Hine-Moa on hearing the trum- 
pet of her lover: as translated — ^and not interi)olated, as he 
has averred to the writer — by Sir Geok(JE Gisky, in his Poly- 
nesian Mythology, p. 148, as follows: "And the yoimg and 
beautiful chieftainess felt as if an earthquake shook her to make 
her go to the beloved of her heart." 

*The volcano similarly has been involved by the ]\Iaoris 
and become a x'^rt of their legendary lore. Vide Polynesian 
Mytliology, p. 97.. 

^ The grandest of the sea-gorges of New Zealand is called 
Milford Sound. Combining preci]")ices over 2,000 feet in height, 
the icy summits of the Southern Alps, and glaciers and water- 
falls descending into valleys plumed with suj)erb tree-ferns, it 
is not surpassed by any of the fiords of Norway in scenic mag- 
nificence and variety. It is supposed to have been cut wholly 
or in great part bj' a stupendous glacier. 

"The glaciers of the Southern Alps are noted for their size 
and number, and especially for their comparative nearness to 
the level of the sea, as an illuj-tration of the fact that the South- 
ern Hemisi)here to-day is passing through a glacial epoch : in 
one place, it is said, the ice descends to a point less than 800 
feet above the sea. 

"The geysers of the volcanic belt of New Zealand are in 
number legion, while in size they are less than those of the 
Yellowstone Park and Iceland. For the fullest account of 
them, and the infinity of phenomena involved, see the several 



216 THE TERRACES OF RGTOMAHANA, 

philosophic papers on the subject by Mr. Martin, referred to 
aboyfej aind others published since. 

* Albeit the Terraces of Kotomahana have been destroyed, 
l^fe% Zfealand is not without noteworthy wonders still in thfe 
way of terrace formations, as they are One Of the resultants 6f 
geyser action. 

' Pounamu : The greenstone, or nephrite ; resembling jade, 
but, I believe, a different mineral. It is found especially, if not 
wholly, on the Middle Island, which, accordingly, was called 
by the Maoris, the country of the greenstone. 

^° Awhato : Several species of fungus, Cordiceps robertsii, et 
al., which enter and occupy the bodies of certain larvae which 
go into the earth in order to pass into the pupa state of their 
existence ; and, curiously, while destroying the grubs, retaining 
intact to a remarkable degree their forms, as animal tubers to 
rush-like plants. The fungus attains a length Of twelve or six- 
teen inches ; and the larva, with which it has become incorpo- 
rate and evolved from generally in a single stem from a point 
near the tail of the grub, so wonderfully preserved, that cross- 
sections under the microscope have revealed the delicate tissues 
of the alimentary canal and other organs involved in the vege- 
table growth without displacement. 

^^ Ponga : A general name for the tree-ferns of New Zealand, 
belonging to the genera Cyathea and DicJcsonia ; the tallest at- 
taining an altitude of forty feet. 

^^ Nikau : A species of palm, Arica sapicla : and one of the 
most remarkable of the living plants of New Zealand, represent- 
ing the flora of the coal measures of Europe and America. 

^^ Rata : An extraordinary plant, Metrosideros rohusta, that 
begins life as a seed lodged in a crevice of a tree, which, before 
sending upward a shoot, sends downward to the earth, at what- 
soever distance it may be, a clinging root. It then becomes a 
vinous parasite of rapid growth, clasping with numerous and 
strong arms the tree to which it clings for support, and in time 
killing it, and supplanting it as a magnificent crimson-flower- 
ing forest tree — in many instances, not only enveloping the 
trunk of. its original support, but involving it in its very being 
and body. 

^* Kauri : A superb broad-leafed, cone-bearing pine, Dam- 
mara australis, attaining a height of 200 feet with a girth of GO ; 
the grandest of the forest trees of New Zealand, and one of the 
monarehs of the vegetable kingdom ; a glimpse into the glories 
of the Carboniferous Age of Europe and America ; for it is one 
of the many plants of the evergreen flora of New Zealand 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA, 217 

which approxhnate or are identical with the types of the coal 
measures. The kauri gum of commerce is the fossil turpentine 
of forest growths of this noble tree which have developed, 
decayed, and disappeared in the past. 

^^ Toke : Enormous earth-worms from one to three feet in 
length ; formerly eaten and considered a great delicacy by the 
natives. 

'"Tuatara: An anomalous reptile, peculiar to New Zealand, 
of a dirty brown color, and attaining a length of about eight- 
een inches; called, at one time, Hatteria punctata, and now 
Sphenodon punctatum. 

^' Kakapo : One of the most extraordinary of the birds of 
New Zealand, a parrot, Stringops habroptilus. 

^® Kea : One of the most remarkable birds of New Zealand, 
a species of parrot, Nestor notabilis. 

^^ Kiwi : A genus of anomalous birds, peculiar to New 
Zealand, and comprising four well-defined species, namely, the 
North Island kiwi, Apteryx Mantelli ; the South Island, A. 
australis; the Little Grey, A. Oweni; and the Big Grey, A. 
Haasti; and a possible fifth, A. maxmia, equaling in size a full 
grown turkey, while the others correspond in bulk to little and 
big varieties of the domestic chicken. 

^"Moa: A family of colossal birds which has become 
extinct during the past century ; peculiar, as far as is known, 
to New Zealand, with the exception of one species, Dinorms 
australis, found in New South Wales, Australia ; in height, rang- 
ing from four to eleven or twelve feet ; wingless, or approxi- 
mately so; and, in their relations with living birds, akin 
most closely to the kiwis, or the genus Apiteryx, of New Zea- 
land, and then, in the order mentioned, to the emus of Austra- 
lia, the cassowaries of New Guinea, New Britain, and the neigh- 
boring islands, the rheas of South America, and the ostriches 
of south-western Asia and Africa — according to Hutton, how- 
ever, " appearing to be intermediate between the rheas and the 
emus and cassowaries." 

^iRuri: A bushy-tailed yellowish variety of the common 
dog, Canis familiaris, found in New Zealand by its European dis- 
covei-ers, and supposed to have been introduced, along with a 
species of rat, by the Maoris, as they themselves assert in their 
traditions. 

2^ Maori : ( Pronounced conventionally as if spelled Mow- 
rie ) The name given to the people found upon the islands of 

2B 



218 THE TERRACES OP ROTOMAHANA. 

New Zealand by their European discoverers, and to their de- 
scendants, now numbering about 40,000; a people belonging 
to the great Polynesian family which includes notably the 
Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans, and Tahitians; warriors, can- 
nibals, and communists in the fullest sense of the words. They 
came to New Zealand from a place called in their traditions 
Hawaiki, which, nominally, is the same as Hawaii, i. e., Hawa- 
iki. Little Java, and which is supposed, accordingly, to indicate 
Java as the fatherland of the several allied peoples of the Paci- 
fic. The first boat-loads of the immigrants, from the genealo- 
gies of several families preserved independently in as many 
parts of the islands, are inferred to have arrived not earlier 
than eight hundred years ago and not later than four hundred. 
^* Moko : The tattooing of the Maori. Not a generation 
ago preserved tattooed heads were an arti(;le of commerce in 
New Zealand ; and to supply the demand, not only were mur- 
ders committed and tribal wars carried on, but slaves also were 
tattooed in a superior style and then deliberately slaughtered — 
their preserved heads being more valuable than their living 
bodies : an evolution in the art of tattooing possibly the high- 
est as well as the most horrible ever attained. Indeed, to such 
an extent was this trade carried on with its attendant evils of 
such a character as to require a special evolution of belief for 
their acceptance, that, upon taking possession of the country 
by the English, the most stringent laws were enacted immedi- 
ately for its suppression and abolition, making the possessor or 
exhibitor of a tattooed head subject to a heavy penalty. 

^* Mere : A peculiar short double-edged sword, insignium of 
rank, sceptre of power, and the ocular and objective symbol 
of ownership in and right of occupation to certain districts or 
regions ; made of wood, whale-bone, and several kinds of 
stone. 

^^ Tiki : A symbolic image, worn on the breast by the Mao- 
ris, men and women, appended to a fillet around the neck ; an 
image, in whale-bone, greenstone, or other material, of an ideal 
bisexual ancestral personage, typifying Man in the abstract and 
called Tiki. 

^^ Tapu : The taboo ; the highest evolution of law among 
the Maoris, and, I may say, too, the Polynesians in general ; 
working at one time for the greatest good, and at another for 
the greatest evil. Its growth seems to have been the result of a 
necessity arising among a communistic people, for government- 
al, sacerdotal, and other special purposes, of isolating certain 
persons and setting apart certain places and things for them — 



THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 219 

the backward swing of the communistic pendulum. The word 
ta-pu means literally priest-marked ; from ta, to mark, or mark- 
ed, as with a brush ; and pu, a priest, or a representative of the 
gods in coimcil, called •dlso pa. 

*' Eotomahana : Literally, ro-to, lake, and ma-ha-na ( accen- 
ted on the first syllable, ) warm, the Warm Lake. 

^^Tarata: From ta-ra, a ridge, by contraction of a redupli- 
cation, taratara ; the accent remaining on the original first syl- 
lable of each. 

^^ Otukapuarangi : Literally, o, a place ; tu, possibly for fe, 
the ; ka-pu-a, cloud ; rang-i, heaven : the place of the cloud of 
heaven. 

^"Maui: One of the most popular and wide-spread of the 
mythic monsters, gods, ideal heroes, or what you will of the 
Polynesians, who plays, in general among his mythic associ- 
ates, the role of a trickster, wonder-worker, dark horse, harle- 
quin. Puck, serpent, and the like, and in particular at one time 
a curious combination of the parts of Loki and Thor in the 
mythology of the Scandinavians ; at another a Jason, Ulysses, 
or Columbus ; and at a third, Prometheus. The name signifies 
the Asker, the Enquirer ; and taking the whole range of his 
actions, achievements, and adventures, he may be regarded as 
a personification of all the good and evil that attend the ask- 
ing, seeking, investigating, and accomplishing of all things. 
In a mischievous prank through disobedience, which resulted 
in his own destruction, he is said to have brought death into 
the world ; while one of his most glorious achievements during 
life was the hooking and bringing to the surface of the sea an 
enormous fish, which is none other than the North Island of 
New Zealand. Hence, according to the legend, or, figuratively 
speaking, the North Island particularly, or New Zealand gener- 
ally, was termed Te Ika a Maui, the Fish of Maui ; and curious- 
ly. Captain Cook and many of his successors, mistaking this 
metaphorical for a truly geographical name, have designated so 
the Northern Island. Among the Hawaiians, Maui, whose 
name is given to the island in which is found the monstrous 
crater of Haleakala, half a mile in depth and thirty-nine miles 
in circumference — Maui, similarly, is said to have hooked up 
the island of Hawaii, the largest of the group : did so, in fact : 
for I have been shown by the Hawaiians the very hook with 
which he did it, now in the form of a lava-islet between the 
island of Maui and Hawaii. 

"^ A rude hut built of slabs of sinter, near the White Ter- 
race was a favorite lying-in room for the Maori women of the 



220 THE TERRACES OF ROTOMAHANA. 

neighborhood : the equable heat and humidity of the place pro- 
ducing relaxation and expediting delivery with minimum pain. 

*^ Vide Polynesian Mythology, p. 30. Ohinenmtu is a Maori 
village on Lake Rotorua ; the name signifying o, a place, M-ne, 
maiden, and mu-tu, last : the place of the last maiden. This 
village and Whakarewarewa, about two and a half miles distant, 
are the most extraordinary of all the odd and curious towns 
I have seen in my travels in the four quarters of the globe, not 
excepting the villages of the Arabs in the ruins of the subter- 
ranean grain-vaults of Carthage, like colonies of prairie-dogs. 
Situated in the midst of a myriad of steam-jets, boiling-pools, 
sulphur-lakes, geysers, and the like — the inhabitants making 
use of them in cooking, baking, washing, bathing, and in keep- 
ing themselves warm in winter — they can be compared to 
nothing within the range of my eye or imagination more ap- 
propriate than the nursery baked pie that revealed the four- 
and-twenty singing blackbirds, when, presumably steaming at 
every crack and crevice of the crust, it was set before the king 
and opened. 

^^A myrtle, Leptospennum scoparium, or L. ericoides. 

** Grey's Polynesian Mythology, p. 72. 

*^ Raupo : An aquatic plant, Typha angustifolia, recalling the 
calamites of the coal-measures. 

^^ " Up to this time the vast Heaven [ Rangi } has remained 
separated from his spouse the Earth [ Papa ]. Yet their mutual 
love continues — the soft warm sighs of her loving bosom ever 
rise to him, ascending from the woody mountains and valleys, 
and men call these mists ; and the vast Heaven, as he mourns 
through the long nights of his separation from his beloved, drops 
frequent tears upon her bosom, and men, seeing these, term 
them dew-drops." — Grey's Polynesian Mythology, p. 9. 

^" So called by the writer in remembrance of his daughter. 

38 By reason of the earthy substances contained. 

3* The wad used bj' the savages of the Amazon in their 
blow-gun, is made of this exceedingly fine and light silk. It 
surrounds the poison-tipped arrow and is carried with it in its 
death-dealing flight. 

*" Polynesian Mytholgy, p. 3. *^ Ibid., p. 35. *^ Ibid., p. 41. 

*^ The " Carlisle P. Patterson," a small steamer belonging 
to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Department, 
Lieut. Richardson Clover, Commanding, in making her first 
trip through the Straits of Magellan from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific coasts of the United States, in 1884-5. 



AUSTRALIA. 121 



AUSTRALIA: A CHARCOAL-SKETCH} 



PROEM— ACROSS THE BOWS. 



Across the bows of the " Zealandia," 
Betwixt the sea and sky, involved in haze, 
I see a faint gray line — Australia ! 
An ancient, outcast island-continent ; 
An Ark adrift within the flood of Time, 
Preserving through unnumbered days and years, 
The fruitful pairs of a primaeval life 
Long vanished elsewhere and forgotten quite ; 
As well, as it hath happed, through Providence 
Or Chance, a goodly portion of the Earth 
Disjunct and set aside long ages since 
For welling England's overflow to-day. 
June, 1885. ' 



INTRODUCTORY. 



" What is the dominant note of Australian scenery ? That 
which is the dominant note of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry — 
Weird Melancholy. A poem like L' Allegro could never be 
written by an Australian. It is too airy, sweet, too freshly 
happy. The Australian mountain forests are funereal, secret, 
stern. Their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle, in 
their black gorges, a story of sullen despair. No tender senti- 
ment is nourished in their shade. In other lands the dying 
year is mourned, the falling leaves fall lightly on his bier. In 
the Australian forests no leaves fall. The savage winds shout 
among the rock clefts. From the melancholy gums strips of 
white bark hang and rustle. The very animal life of these 
frowning hills is either grotesque or ghostly. Great gray kang- 

2C 



122 AUSTRALIA. 

aroos hop noislessly over the coarse grass. Flights of white 
cocatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls. The sun sudden- 
ly sinks, and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi- 
human laughter. The natives aver that, when nigbt coimes, 
from out the bottomless depth of some lagoon the Bun yip rises, 
and, in form like monstrous sea-calf, drags his loathsome le^igth 
from out the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a 
dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives painted like skel- 
etons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy. No bright fancies are 
linked with the memories of the mountains. Hopeless ex- 
plorers have named them out of their sufferings — Mount Mis- 
ery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan 
scenes in places 

' Made green with the running of rivers, 
And gracious with temperate air,' 

the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful 
grandeur of these barren hills, it drinks in their sentiment of 
defiant ferocity, and is steeped in bitterness. 

" Australia has rightly been named the Land of the Dawn- 
ing. Wrapped in the mist of early morning, her history looms 
vague and gigantic. The lonely horseman riding between the 
moonlight and the day sees vast shadows creeping across the 
shelterless and silent plains, hears strange noises in the primae- 
val forest where flourishes a vegetation long dead in other 
lands, and feels, despite his fortune, that the trim utilitarian 
civilization which bred him shrinks into insignificance beside 
the contemptuous grandeur of forest and ranges coeval with an 
age in which European scientists have cradled his own race. 

" There is a poem in every form of tree or flower, but the 
poetry which lives in the trees and flowers of Australia differs 
from that of other countries. Europe is the home of knightly 
song, of bright deeds and clear morning thought. Asia sinks 
beneath the weighty recollections of her past magnificence, as 
the Suttee sinks, jewel-burdened, upon the corpse of dead 
grandeur, destructive even in its death. America swiftly hur- 
ries on her way, rapid, glittering, insatiable, even as one of her 
own giant waterfalls. From the jungles of Africa, and the 
creeper-tangled groves of the Islands of the South, arise, from 
the glowing hearts of a thousand flowers, heavy and intoxicat- 
ing odors — the Upas-poison which dwells in barbaric sensu- 
ality. In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque, the 
Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning how to write. 
Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers 
without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who 
have not yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in 



AUSTRALIA. 123 

the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic 
land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty 
of loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad of tongues of the 
wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the un- 
couth, and can read the hieroglyphs of haggard grun-trees, 
blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or 
cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in 
a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild 
dreamland termed the Bush interprets itself, and the poet of 
our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his 
heritage of desert sand better than all the bountiful richness of 
Egypt." — Marcus Clakke : J-'reface to the Poems of Adam Lind- 
my Gryrdon. 



AUSTRALIA: A CHARCOAL-SKETCH. 



Here rhyme was first framed without fashion. 

Song shaped without form. — Adam Lindsay Gordon, 



A Saunterer : poetic, philosophic, fanciful, facetious, or 
grotesque, as time and chance and circumstance 
determine : on the wallaby ^ a second time around 
the world : 

Assuming for the nonce to be 

A Seer and a Singer : all his senses to the sense of sight 
subordinate, involving his environment; and all 
his energies concentred and expended in his 
speech, evolving his environment in song : 

I see and sing 

AUSTRALIA ! 

The Austral World ; *- 

The World beneath the Cross, the Coalsack, and the 

Magellanic Clouds of Southern Skies ; 
The Nether World ; 
The World below the Belt ; 
The World Antipodal ; 



124 AUSTRALIA. 

The World of Shakespeare's Anthropophagi whose 
Heads do grow beneath their Shoulders for a 
verity ; 

The World Upset ; 

The World Turned Upside Down ; 

The World of Topsiturvia ! 

A Somewhere South to the Chinese for untold ages : 
whence trepang or beche-de-nier ; 

A Somewhere South and East associated with the Gol- 
den Chersonesus to the Greeks of Alexander's time 
and centuries succeeding : whence the vessels of 
the seas beyond the shores of India : deep-laden 
with the silks and spices of the Orient expanding 
North and South : fact-founded, fancy-formed : a 
stolen kiss evolved into a marriage-dream ; 

The Lochac of the medise'val Marco Polo : first of 
European wanderers to face the rising sun and 
point with left hand to a wondrous habitable 
North, Cipango, or Japan, and with the right hand 
to a wondrous habitable South, the world of Aus- 
tralasia ! 

Kai Dowdai : Little Country : to the natives of the 
Northeast Coast : from Muggi Dowdai : Big : New 
Guinea: Papua: the flats of York Peninsula ap- 
pearing small beside the heights of Papua : and 
that not in the eye of savages not in their speech ; 

The South Land of the Holy Ghost to the Pacific's 
pioneers, the pious Portuguese ; 

New Holland to the Dutch ; 

The Austral Great Unknown unto the English till the 
time of Cook ; 

AUSTRALIA from the days of Captain Flinders for all 
time ! 

I see and sing 

The Seas Surrounding : sweeping, swashing, gnawing, 
gnashing : coming to and going from : a mighty 



AUSTRALIA. 125 

ravenous amoeboid monster having in its maw a 
continental animalculum: alternately devouring 
and rejecting it ; eternally digesting and ejecting 
it : Amoeba panpelagica ! 

The Arafura Sea : Molucca-ward ; 

The Coral : Micronesia-ward ; 

The South Pacific : Maori-ward ; 

The Indian : Wilkes' Land- and Madagascar- ward ; 

And all their inland reachings: friths and forths, 
creeks, inlets, sounds, bays, bights, and gulfs : 

The Great Australian Bight ; 

The Gulf of Carpentaria ; 

Ports Jackson, Phillip, Denison — all, in a word the 
sound of which has been a falling clod upon a 
living sepulchre to millions of mankind, 

The Bay of Botany ! 

I see and sing 

The Great South Land, 

In its totality and ultimate divisibility ! 

The largest of the fragments of the broken and dissev- 
ered continent of Australasia ; 

An area approximately kidney-shaped. 

About the size of Uncle Sam's domain from sea to sea ; 

Astride the Line of Capricorn, 

Half in the Torrid Zone and half in the South Tem- 
perate ; 

An almost rainless desert bowl irregularly rimmed and 
ridged with mediocral mountains : rain-condens- 
ing, forest-clad ; 

An Austral Great Sahara Desert, ringed and ridged, 
and flecked and fringed, with Atlas Mountains, 
Aspen Oasis, Nile Valley, and Algerian Tell ! 

I see and sing 

Lake Amadeus : Dead Sea centre of the Austral 
World : Symbolic here of the ten thousand inland 



126 AUSTRALIA. 

fluctuating saline lakes and marshes, ponds, and 
swamps, and the lagoons along the sea-coast of 
Victoria : the correspondents of the Shotts of Al- 
giers and the Bitter Lakes of Utah and Nevada : 
pools of ocean water left within the pits and hol- 
lows of the Continental Kraken when it came up 
from the bottom of the sea ; 

The Murray : Goolwa : Hume : the largest of the riv- 
ers of the Austral World : the correspondent in 
its course and current of the Orange of South 
Africa : in periods of drought decaying by absorp- 
tion and evaporation as it nears the sea into a 
chain of stagnant pools : A symbol here of all the 
rivers of Australia evanishing in earth and air : 
and those, as well, the sea-board streams that 
hasten from the heights along the coast into the 
inlets of the ocean meeting them halfway ; 

Mount Kosciusko : highest of the summits of Austra- 
lia : flecked with snow throughout the summer : 
caiioned grandly : showing scars of ancient gla- 
ciers : Symbol here of all the earth-ascendings and 
descendings of the Continental Isle ; 

The barren beach of the surrounding sea : the Utgard 
of Australia ; 

The dreary dunes along the coast ; 

The seaward grass-green mountain flanks ; 

The weathering walls and frowning precipices over- 
head; 

The summit beauties and sublimities of the Australian 
Alps : the Asgard of Australia ; 

The dark depths of the gorges and defiles ; 

The withering widening wastes ; 

The parched plateaux ; 

The stretches strewn with fire-flaked flint ; 

The cracked and baked black bottoms of evaporated 
pools ; 

The blistering belts of rocks ; 

The burning sweeps of sand; 



AUSTRALIA. 127 

The simmering salt and soda sinks ; 

The dim delirious outlining of Lake Amadeus : a de- 
scent unto a depth below the circle of the all-sur- 
rounding ocean : down, down, down, through all 
the stages of a burning fever to delirium and 
Death ! the centre of the Midgard of Australia ! 

I see and sing 

The Riverina : 'twixt the Darling and the Murrumbid- 
gee : richest of the austral regions : typic here of 
all the fertile oases that band and belt and dot the 
continental sink ; 

The Caverns of Jenolan : wondrous water-wormings 
through an ancient coral strand upheaved into a 
mountain: filled with stalactitic jets and pen- 
dants, stalagmitic pillars, beads, and buttresses, de- 
pending robes with crystal-diamonds spangled, 
and a myriad of fantasies of form besides : the 
concrete correspondent of the dreaming of the 
youth who fashioned at maturity the Taj Mahal : 
Symbolic here of all the antres of the Austral 
World ; 

The Canons of Katoomba : Cowan's Canon, * Govett's 
Leap, the Witch's Leap, and the ten thousand gaps 
and gorges. Fairy Dells and Devil Glens besides : 
romantic, picturesque, grim, ghastly, hellish : 
which compose in quarto the Grand Colorado Can- 
on Region of America in folio ; 

The Barrier Reef surnamed the Great: incomparable 
coral strand : the largest of the world : A symbol 
here of the infinity of reefs and bars, projecting 
points, peninsulas, capes, rocks, and islets which 
compound the shore-line of Australia. 

I see and sing 

The NEVER-NEVER COUNTRY : Word within itself 
an Epic of the Austral Continental Isle ! 



128 AUSTRALIA. 

And therein of the Something-Nothing which the Eye 
must bring with it the Something-half to see at 
all : 

The sea-like solitude of the primaeval wastes ; 

The Inca-corse-like desiccation and decay ; 

The cavern-like vacuity ; 

The OM-like mystery ; 

The ever-present eldritchness ; 

The fixed and glassy eye-stare of ineffable despair ; 

The spectral shadows of the starving Burke and Wills : 
with staggering steps zigzagging on the burning 
banks of Cooper's Creek in search of Nardoo seeds : 
with feeble fingers clutching them spasmodically 
as their last resource : with gasping greed devour- 
ing them : with eating only famishing the faster 
and more horribly : a Barmecidal feast of most 
appalling ghastliness ! the Austral tale of Tan- 
talus ! 

The melancholy memories of Leichhardt's fate : to 
fashion every stain of gray upon the yellow sand 
into the very spot where down the wanderer sank 
to rise no more : the sand discolored by his dis- 
solution and decay : his dust indissoluble with 
the desert : his eternal monument ! * 

The ghost of Gordon galloping upon a phantom Favo- 
rite : the bright white moonlight entering the hole 
made by a self-directed bullet through his skull 
and streaming out a flame of spirit-burning blue : 
the while an echo of the beating of his heart is 
heard within his haunting rhymes ! 

And Spectral Shades of Sin and Crime: hulk-smelling, 
fetter-galled, demanhoodized : enough to demonize 
another Dante-Hell ! 

A.nd scintillating over and amid the phantom forms, 
the hammerfiush of Henry Kendall : master saga- 
smith of Australdom : his stithy in the bush be- 
neath a fire-charred stringy -bark : his bellows'-blast 
the buster and brickfielder : and the ghastly glow- 



AUSTRALIA. 229 

ing iron taking beauteous shape beneath his mea- 
sured blows, or this or that : a brother murcjered 
'' in a far-off sultry summer rimmed with thunder- 
cloud and red with forest fires : " a kinsman 
slaughtered on " the windless downs : blue-gleam- 
ing like a sea of molten steel ! " 

I see and sing 

The Record of the Rocks ! 

The Cosmic Elements of which the Continental Island 
is composed : forever changing their relationships 
with one another : coming, going : building up 
and breaking down : Protean ! Symbol here of one 
and all, the King and Queen of Metals, Gold and 
Silver : now, diffused through land and sea, 
atomic : now, concentrated in dust and grain and 
ingot : now, composing the blood-globules — red 
and white — of the world-roaming monster. Com- 
merce : now, returning by attrition to the indivis- 
ible atomic to begin another round anew ; 

The Movements and the Moldings of the Planet as a 
whole involving as a part the Continental Island : 
incidental to Rotation, Revolution, Cooling and 
Collapsing, Differentiating into divers densities : 
Evolving from a Unit into an Infinity : The Kid- 
ney-contour of the Continental Island here a type 
of all ; 

The Alternation of the Land and Sea : the going up 
and down of the vast area in part or as a whole : 
and all the incidents to the seesawing of the con- 
tinent : upheaval into mountain and subsidence 
into sink : climatic change, organic change : ero- 
sion, drift : the dead o'erlaid with loam and hard- 
ened into stone : connection made or disconnection 
with adjoining lands : admitting or excluding 
plants and animals, or here or there, or now or 
then : effecting a peculiar isolation in the end, with 
2D 



230 AUSTRALIA. 

distant or long dead affinities elsewhere, most mar- 
velous: commingling fossils elsewhere separated 
and defining geologic ages : puzzling scientists : 
The Great Dividing Range symbolic here of all; 

The Alternation of the Geologic Seasons: Dry and 
Wet : an Eon-Summer baking the vast isle into 
the correspondent of the Great Sahara Desert, as 
to-day: an Eon- Winter drenching it into the cor- 
respondent of the Valley of the Amazon, as yester- 
day; 

The hot and humid Eocene evolving through the Mi- 
ocene and Pliocene into the cool and wet Post- 
Pliocene : the era of the elephantine in Australia 
as in America and other continental regions of the 
globe ; 

The cool and wet Post-Pliocene evolving through suc- 
ceeding centuries into the Recent: hot and dry: 
A continental emperor decaying in his robes of 
state : his flesh and bones dissolving into desert- 
dust: his gorgeous forest-raiment vanished -r- all, 
save here and there, within a cool and humid 
mountain-gorge, a shred or patch : revealing in a 
part the grandeur and the beauty of the whole ! , 

I see and sing 

The Dykes and Overflowings of Basaltic Trap : the 
squeezing upward of the molten lavas of the centre 
of the cooling and collapsing crust: the paper- 
pulp to be transformed into the pages of the Re- 
cord of the Rocks : decaying, forming soil of mar- 
velous fertility : Mount Tomah symbol here of 
all ; 

The various Volcanic Vomitings : occurring at the in- 
tersection of the Earth-crust cracks : and differing 
from the preceding only in a concentration and 
continuance of action and discharge: cone-form- 
ing : Mount Canobolas the last and typic here of 
all; 



AUSTRALIA. 231 

The Granites and the Porphyries ; 

The Diorites and Serpentines ; 

The Old Silurian: the mausoleum of the Adam and 
the Eve of the biologists ; 

The Coral Strands compacted and converted into Mar- 
ble Beds; 

The Shales and 'Sands of the Devonian : entombing 
Scale-tree, Rhynchonellae, Spirifers ; 

The Lower Coals : entombing ocean shells ; 

The Upper Coals : entombing air-plants : notably Glos- 
sopteris : and yielding Iron, Coal and Kerosene ; 

The thick Hawkesbury Sands: entombing Cleith- 
rolepis : forming the grand mural precipices of 
the Austral Alps ; 

The overlaid Wianamatta Shales; Palseoniscus sep- 
ulchre ; 

The Clarence Beds ; 

The vast Cretaceous Strata: water-charged: great in- 
land reservoirs awaiting but the Diamond Drill to 
make of burning sand a Paradise ; 
The Tertiary Rocks and Drifts : entombing plants ap- 
proximating those of the same geologic age in 
other continental areas : a Flora rich and varied : 
tropical or semi-tropical : and not subordinated to 
one genus as the Flora of the Present to the ghast- 
ly Gums or Eucalypts ; 
The Present Depositions : aggregating and compacting 
film on film: by overflowing or evaporating wa- 
ters: here distributing disintegrated quartz and 
sandstone far and wide o'er fertile valleys : there 
concentrating suspended marl and limestone in 
vast desert clay-pans : filling them with dazzling 
snow-white gypsum crystals: selenite: or other 
salt; 
The Whole: the Record of the Rocks: the scattered 
leaves of the Cumajan Sibyl of the Ages of the 
Earth turned into Stone : a word on one : a letter 
and a fragment of a sentence on a second and a 



232 AUSTRALIA. 

third : a mystic symbol on a fourth : each unintel- 
ligible in itself: but joined aright with this 
or that, Oracular: an utterance of an Eternal 
Truth ! 

I see and sing 

The Ether Circumambient ! 

And therein of the Sun : to the observer, going round 
the earth from right to left : and casting shadows 
ever pointing southerly : a World of Widdershins ; 

The Seasons upside down : midsummer in December, 
midwinter in July ; 

The Autumn's aromatic breeze ; 

The Winter's ozone-bringing wind ; 

The wattle-perfumed zephyr of the Spring ; 

The Summer's furnace-blast ; 

The thermometric readings running up to Nine and 
Thirty plus One Hundred, Fahrenheit ! 

The noon and midnight variations reaching Ninety- 
nine degrees : the Eye of Heaven, the fiery eye of 
a hot-blooded warrior by day : the icy eye of an 
assassin in the night : forbidding hope : repelling 
prayer : transfixing in a gasp or shudder of des- 
pair ! 

The Buster and Brickfielder : austral red-dust blizzard 
and red-hot Simoom ; 

The Drought: a blast like that which smote the As- 
syrian host; 

The pools diminishing from day to day becoming poi- 
sonous to bird and beast : attracting with deceitful 
glare for many miles around and leaving on their 
fatal shores the gasping staggering forms of myr- 
iads : their decomposing carcasses : their bones : a 
problem to the future scientist ; 

The pools becoming poisonous : to the surviving Black 
a terrible experience : a ghastly spectacle : an ex- 
hibition of mysterious malignity and might : the 
fact before his eyeballs to evolve into the fantasy 



AUSTRALIA. 233 

behind of this or that dread monster dwelling in 
the venom-vats : or Bun-yip, Wan-gul, Myn-die, 
Mul-ge-wan-ke, or the like : assuming this or that 
familiar shape, or emu, snake, or kangaroo : the 
austral correspondent of the Many-headed Hydra 
of the Greeks ; 

The pools becoming poisonous : to the surviving Black 
as well the cause compelling him, in order to al- 
lay his burning thirst and live, to take the desert 
frog from out its hole and squeeze into his mouth 
the precious water-drops its bladder holds : the 
fact, as well, before his eyeballs to evolve into the 
fantasy behind of this or that inexplicable fable 
otherwise : the Tiddalick, a giant frog, that, laugh- 
ing at a dancing eel — prosaically, croaking at the 
Black's unearthing crooked stick, — disgorges water 
to supply mankind, create a deluge, or the like ; 

The heated air uprising from the burning deserts : 
swirling, sweeping, gathering the dust and sand 
and withered herbage : forming lofty, swaying, fast- 
revolving desert-spouts : inverted spiral cones : 
now, scattered o'er the plains a score or more of 
merry waltzing Brobdingnagian sylphs : anon, 
evanishing : succeeded, haply, by an all-involving 
overwhelming hurricane : a demon-god of in- 
exsuperable rage, malignity, and might ; 

The Rain : the chief of all the wonder-workers of the 
Austral World : where, haply, for a time beyond 
the memory of man, naught but'the glare of burn- 
ing sands appeared, behold! before the cloud- 
rack of an adventitious desert-drenching storm 
has vanished from the sky, a myriad of pale-green 
sprouts uprising from as many earth-secreted seeds : 
and then a maze of dark-green foliage : a crazy- 
quilt of floral bloom spread over countless leagues : 
a wilderness of sweets : a broad-cast scattering of 
seeds to sleep again mayhap for centuries ! the fa- 
ble of the falling show'r of gold into the lap of 



234 AUSTRALIA. 

Danae a grand and glorious fact ! 

The Whole the Song of Solomon Unsung : in chaos ; 
hottest of hot breaths commingled with the rarest 
perfumes : kisses : swelterings : exhaustions : Life 
and Death ! 

The while — wonder of the World Turned upside 
Down ! — the Southern Hemisphere of the revolv- 
ing Earth is in a Glacial Age ! 

I see and sing' 

The Bush : the Flora of the Austral World ! 

The Stag-horn Fern : its fronds expanding like the flat 
palmated antlers of the moose of Maine ; 

The Bird's-nest Fern : its canna-leaf-like fronds encom- 
passing the trunks of lofty trees : composing fitting- 
capitals unto the columns of the forest Parthenon ; 

The Arborescent Ferns : Alsophila australis running up 
to forty, sixty, eighty feet before expanding into a 
gigantic parasol of vegetable plumes, or metamor- 
phosing into a fount of sea-green water : passing 
into spray and air before descending to the earth ; 

The Pherosphoera : intermediate between a Lycopodium 
and Juniper; 

The Kangaroo-grass : from the sea of salt surrounding 
to the sea of salt enclosed, enticing ever on and on 
the hungriest of the flock and herd : the shepherd 
and the stockman following : and then the town 
and city : wanting which, the continental island 
were four-fifths a blank to-day ; 

The Microzamias : half fern, half palm : the austral 
substitute of the symbolic palm of Rome ; 

The Cocoanut, the Fan, and Cabbage Palms ; 

The Grass-tree : Black-boy : Yellow-gum : a monstrous 
arborescent Rush : anear, resembling tussocks of 
coarse overarching grass upon a stunted, stumpy, 
blackened branching palm : afar, a native Black : 
its flowering spike, his spear : of divers uses 
and diverse : from dyeing silk to making an 



AUSTRALIA. 235 

illuminating gas ; 

The gorgeous Illawarra Lily : Doryanthes : bearing 
crimson floral clusters on a lofty spike : from ten 
to twenty feet in height ; 

The glorious Cyrtosia : the orchid marvel of the austral 
bush : its myriad of beautiful and fragrant flowers 
strung along a trailing stem for thirty feet ! 

The Cherry Tree : with fruit turned inside out ; 

The Bunya-bunya : noble representative of a most an- 
cient gens of pine : broad-leafed, big-coned : its 
nut-like seed a store of fattening food : a grove the 
only heir-loom of the Black ; 

The She-oaks : Beefwood : Austral Larch, or Fir : in 
lieu of leaves, the termination of the branches 
subdivided into pendent tufts and tassels of at- 
tenuated and articulated twigs : like the antennae 
of a beetle or a prawn ! a spectral arborescent 
Equisetum ! smoky -green, funereal : The curtained 
chamber of the dead, the tasseled pall, the hearse's 
drooping plumes, the melancholy of the cypress- 
shaded grave, the closing lashes wet with tears, the 
blank hereafter — all organic in a tree ! 

The Murn or Mallee-oak : in times of drought its hol- 
low stems supplying life-sustaining water to the 
Black : competing as a fountain with the dew-con- 
serving bladder of the desert-frog ; 

The Mulga-tree : its water-yielding roots another rival 
of the bladder of the desert-frog ; 

The Giant Nettle-tree : a hive of bees in every leaf; 

The Banyan-tree : the grandest of the Figs : in its ex- 
pansion and extension, self-supporting its long 
arms with outward-leaning, life-renewing, sup- 
plemental props : the fable of Antseus in the form 
of tree : or, happily, the British Empire symbol- 
ized in its expansion and extension round the 
world : adventurous dependent filaments here tak- 
ing root and there, and, in the course of time, be- 
coming independent props and nourishers, and 



236 AUSTRALIA. 

passing the o'erspreading and o'ersheltering sway 
to farther points : until the branches, North and 
South and East and West, o'erlap and interlace : 
the grandest governmental growth the globe has 
ever seen ! 

The Big-leafed Fig : related closely to the last : its 
sprawling, widely buttressed base, compounding 
and confounding root and trunk and twisting limb, 
a wonder of the vegetable world ; 

The Boabab : the Gouty Stem, the Monkey-bread, Sour 
Gourd^ or Cream-of-Tartar-tree : of all the vegeta- 
ble monsters of the earth, the chief: a huge, aerial, 
arborescent yam ! a bulb become a tree without a 
bole ! a root, compounding sponge and mucilage, 
Barbadoes'-leg and the deformities of gout, rejected 
by the earth, and heaved and humped up in the 
air into a tree ! defying ax, drought, fire, and time : 
endowed with a shark-heart vitality : deciduous : 
its gourd-like fruit filled with a mealy melting 
acid mass : a desert substitute for lemonade ! 

The Desert Pea : the floral beauty of the Midgard 
scrub ; 

The Wattles : many kinds of many qualities : of some, 
the footstalks simulating leaves and substituting 
them : in the evolvement of the Leaf, a stage be- 
yond the She-oak, with its leafless terminals divid- 
ed into jointed threadlike twigs ; 

The Lilac or White Cedar-tree : deciduous : its purple 
bloom, night-scented, beautiful ; 

The Flame-tree : all the beauty and the splendor of a 
conflagration in its bloom ! 

The Salt-bush of the inland flats ; 

The Christmas Tree : the holly of the Austral World ; 

And chief among the world of wondrous worts besides. 

The Eucalypts : bark-shedding, camphor-scented, gum- 
exuding, fever-frighting evergreens : a probable 
suggestion of the Boomerang within their leathery 
leaves : vertical suspended : shadowless ; 



AUSTRALIA. 237 

The Eucalypts : their bark depending from their naked 
limbs and trunks in swaying, fraying ribbons, tat- 
ters, shreds : Stripped to the waist, a forestful of 
grizzled, gaunt, and haggard gaberlunyie-men ; A 
myriad of outcast Lears : The summer dream of 
Sydney Smith : stripped of his flesh and sitting in 
his bones : here realized in grim and grotesque 
forestry ; 

The Eucalypts : of the Black Spur, with slightly taper- 
ing trunk, high-reaching slender branch, long, 
light, and airy limb, and spectral finial twig, up- 
rising to a point o'ertopping the Big Trees of Cali- 
fornia : A formula objective of the operations of 
the human brain : evolving, ramifying, and at- 
tenuating Thought into an ultimate : a point in 
philosophic or poetic fantasy ne'er reached before ! 

The Whole : the Austral Bush in its totality : The 
spectral shadows of the dead and buried Miocene 
of Europe still within the wood : A musty medi- 
aeval folio on Demonology perused alone at dusk : 
the savor and the subject of the volume giving to 
the wilderness of the blackletter text an all-pervad- 
ing eldritchness : a woodcut here and there impart- 
ing shape and visual reality unto the diabolic and 
the weird : and the illuminated letters serving rath- 
ed to intensify than to relieve with their bright hues 
the all-involving spectre-haunted gloom ! 

I see and sing 

The Fauna of the Austral World — 

The Fauna of the Water and the Land ! 

The Idia: a symbol here of all the lowest forms of 

ocean life ; 
The Giant Earthworm : six feet long : the Anaconda of 

the Annelids ; 
The rare Trigonia : a Mesozoic memory : a baby kiss 

in an objective unobjectionable form in its oppos- 
2E 



238 AUSTRALIA. 

ing pinkish pearl-lined shells : an idyll of the 
young world's beauty, innocence, and purity ; 

The Case- or Lictor-moths : Metura : marvelous among 
the marvels of the insect world ; 

The Wattle- and the Grass-tree-boring Moth-grubs : 
fried or roasted, luscious morsels : titbits for the 
gastronomic gods of old : the Blue Point oysters 
of the Austral World ; 

The Honey-bee : about the bigness of the housefly : 
stingless : black : before the bigger armed incomer 
with the Colonist fast disappearing with the Black : 
one savage weakling going with another every- 
where upon the advent of the civilized and strong ; 

The Dromia conchifera : a stalk-eyed crab upholding 
with a supernumerary pair of walking legs a mol- 
lusk half-shell as a shield : a grotesque little Ajax 
Telamon ; 

The Cobble-toothed Port Jackson Shark : Cestracion : 
crab-crushing, moUusk-munching : old-world ocean 
ghoul : organic shadow of the Secondary Seas fore- 
cast into to-day ; 

The Burnett Salmon of the Queensland streams : 
Ceratodus : nor fish, nor flesh, nor good red her- 
ring : Fish-branch of the Zoologic Tree just at the 
point of forking into Frog : and like the last and 
the Trigonia, belonging rather to an early Mesozo- 
ic age of the Earth's history than this ! 

The Leafy Dragon-fish : Phyllopteryx : the most fan- 
ta.stic of all piscine forms : the ultimate of the 
bizarre and Japanesque : the fancy of the hereto- 
fore incomparably whimsic artist Hokusai out- 
Hokusai'd in fact ! The male pouched somewhat 
like a female kangaroo : enveloping the eggs laid 
by the female in a soft subcaudal sack, and thus 
transporting them till hatched ! 

The Crested Serpent-fish : Regalecus : a length attain- 
ing — fifteen, twenty — who can say how many 
feet? the dorsal fin extending its whole length and 



AUSTRALIA. 239 

rising from the head into a long back-streaming 
crest : a sea-chirasera or sea-serpent for a verity ! 

The Pygopods : with rudimentary fore-limbs : three- 
quarters lizard and one-quarter snake ; 

The .Lialids : with no external trace of limbs : one- 
quarter lizard and three-quarters snake ; 

The dread Death Adder : typic here of all the austral 
snakes : an ultimate depending and perverted off- 
shoot from the Reptile-branch of the great Zoologic 
Tree : the fore-and hind-legs of the lizard gone, and 
its innocuous saliva turned into the venom of a 
tooth -formed sting ; 

The Long-necked Turtle of the inland creeks : reptilian 
crane ; 

The mighty Megalania : a monstrous, many-horned, 
gigantic saurian of old : in miniature within the 
living Moloch horridus ; 

The Lizard ruffed or frilled like pictured Queen Eliza- 
beth : Chlamydosaurus : hopping on its hind-legs ; 
Frog-branch of the Zoologic Tree just at the point 
of forking into Bird ; 

The Emu and the Cassowary: and the huge extinct 
Dromornis : desert-formed into an avian giraffe : 
its energies expended in evolving legs and neck in 
lieu of wings : the needful for the not : the Bird- 
branch of the Zoologic Tree just after forking from 
the Reptile : pelvis, sternum, cranium Reptilian ; 

The Mound-birds : Megapods : as yet which have not 
learned to build a nest and hatch their young 
themselves, but still, remembering their reptile 
origin, when they have scratched and scraped to- 
gether a great mound of sand and herbage-mold, 
depositing their eggs therein, and leaving them to 
be brought forth by the engendered heat and moist- 
ure of the heap fermenting in the sun : the new= 
born chicks, like new-born crocodiles, requiring 
not a mother's care : like China's symbol sage, 
born hoary-headed, worldly wise; 



240 AUSTRALIA. 

The Bower-birds : with voices not yet specialized in 
song and art-ideas not yet fixed and fashioned in 
fair nests : unto the typic Bird, as prattling, play- 
house-building children unto Man and Woman : 
present fiction fingerings tow'rd future facts ; 

The Crested Cockatoo : the golden-crowned White Par- 
rot Czar of all the Russias of the Austral Conti- 
nent; 

The Piping Crow : the magpie of the South ; 

The Lyre-bird': wondrous-tailed, mimetic, shy : afar in 
the seclusion of the bush involving its environment 
and then evolving it in vocal correspondents to the 
wondering world : the symbol of the austral Son 
of Song ; 

The Sable Swan : beneath the Southern Cross, the 
night incarnate, as the White, beneath the North- 
ern Bear, the Day ; 

The Honey-suckers : feather -tongued : Australia's hum- 
ming-birds ; 

The Curaduck : a kind of crane : in quaker garb a pan- 
tomimic clown : from grave to gay alternating in a 
surprising manner : now, as solemn as a self-sub- 
duing saint : anon, a flighty and fantastic Merry 
Andrew ! dancing, kicking, pirouetting ! turning^ 
tumbling, twisting, twitching ! halting, hopping, 
moping, stalking ! Spider -monkey metamorphos- 
ed into Bird ! 

The Cereopsis : bird compounding goose and crane : 
and yet not of the water but the land ! 

The extinct Phillip Island Parrot : cousin-germ an to 
the honey-sucking, sheep-destroying and -devour- 
ing kea of Zealandia ; 

The Great Kingfisher : alias, the Gogobera : alias, the 
Laughing Jackass : alias ^ the Settler's Clock i rob- 
bed of its birthright as a fisher by the Buster-ban- 
dits of the Austral World — its occupation gone, 
turned scoffer, mocker, loon, in the expression of 
its unavailing rage and all-involving feelings of re- 



AUSTRALIA. 



241 



venge : an avian demoniac Democritus : its laugh- 
ter loud, chaotic, and maniacal : a voicing of the 
wild, the weird, the eldritch, and the ghastly of 
the Never-Never Country not to be encompassed 
by the mutterings of Man : a desert dirge inimit- 
able, unapproachable, unique! 

I see and sing 

The Monotremes : egg-laying, suckling at the waist : 
the halves of the cerebrum not connected: the 
Reptilian-branch of the great Zoologic Tree just at 
the point of forking into the Mammalian ! 

The Cogera : Echidna : hedgehog-shaped, fossorial, 
shade-loving, myrmecophagous : the Austral 
World's Ant-eater, Aard-Vark, Hedgehog, Porcu- 
pine, and Mole in one ; 

The Tambreet : Duck-mole : Platypus : Ornithorhyn- 
chus : fur-clad, duck-billed and web-footed, sun- 
abhorring, water-haunting, and earth-burrowing : 
half-bird, half-beast ! Old Mother Nature mental- 
ly confused : compounding and confounding her 
new Bird and Mammal types ! 

I see and sing 

The Myriad of Mammal-makeshifts of the austral 
Fauna : The Marsupials : ( albeit, some with 
pouches, some without: some with pouch-bones, 
some without : ) the Mammal-branch of the great 
Zoologic Tree just after forking from the Reptile : 
inchoate, chaotic, monstrous : Nature-dreams in- 
corporate ; 

The Kurboroo : Koala : Phascolarctos : bunty, bob- 
tailed, big-paunched, browsing bugaboo : the 
mythic wise beast of the fictions of the Black : a 
makeshift Monkey, Bear, and Sloth : the most 
grotesque of all the gargoyles of the old cathedral 
of Australia ; 

The Wombat : thickset, chisel-toothed, fossorial : a 



242 AUSTRALIA. 

makeshift of the Groundhog of America, the 
weather-wise " Old Probabilities ; " 

The huge, extinct Diprotodon and Nototherium : the 
makeshifts and contemporaries of the Megatherium 
and Mylodon; 

The Phascogals : not pouched : the makeshifts of the 
Weasels, Minks, and Stoats ; 

The Phalangers : prehensile-tailed : the makeshifts of 
the Monkeys of America ; 

The Bandicoot : a makeshift of the Mole : " as miser- 
able as a Bandicoot," a popular comparison of 
problematic truth and odious accordingly to man 
and beast; 

The Belideus and the Petaurist : the makeshifts of the 
Flying Squirrels — rather. Squirrel-parachutes ; 

The Myrmecobius : not pouched : a puny makeshift 
of the Great Anteater of the Amazon : resorting, it 
is said, to strategy to supplement its lack of 
strength and claw : instead of tearing up an ant- 
hill and devouring its inhabitants within their sub- 
terranean cells, enticing them without, by running 
rapidly around the hill, and licking up a legion 
ere they can return ! 

The Dasyures : the makeshifts of the little cat-like 
carnivores ; 

The Thylacine : without pouch-bones : the makeshift 
of the wolf-like carnivores ; 

The jaw-determined, fierce, extinct Thylacoleo : make- 
shift and contemporary of the Sabre-tooth ; 

The Kangaroos, the Wallaroos, the Wallabies, and Pad- 
emelons : makeshifts of the Deer and Antilopes : 
their evolution back and downward into tail and 
hind-legs, the reverse of that which has effected 
Man : In this the correspondents of the Spider 
Monkeys of the Amazon : depending and distorted 
off-shoots from the Mammal-mainbranch of the 
Zoologic Tree : corrupted lines of the grand Iliad 
of Life descending into doggerel, or muttered back- 



AUSTRALIA. 243 

ward, like a witch's prayer, converted into sense- 
less gibberish ! 

I see and sing 

The Orders of the Mammals not included in the Mono- 
tremes and the Marsupials, indigenous : 

The curious Hapalotis : a little rodent in the form of 
kangaroo : in Kangaroodom doing as the kanga- 
roos ; 

The Land-rats and the Water-rats : for such there be 
in Netherdom as in the Upperdom of Avon's 
Bard; 

The great, gregarious Bat : the Flying-fox ; 

The Eared and Earless Seals ; 

The Dugong : Halicore : the oriental Manatee : the 
father of the fiction of the half-man half-fish mons- 
ters of the sea ; 

The yellow-sided delphic Bottle-nose ; 

The Whales : Balsenidse : organic tanks of oil sea-piped 
around the world : a score or more : among the 
small, the Diplodon and the Mesoplodon : with 
long and tapering beak : and in the lower jaw two 
pairs of teeth : that meeting, as they sometimes do, 
above the upper jaw prevent the animal from 
opening its mouth and causing thus its death ; 

The Dingo : dusky, brush-tailed, fox- and wolfish : 
howling, screeching : barkless : tamable : allied to 
the Coyote of Nevada and the Dhole of Bengal : 
the Wolf-twig of the Mammal-branch just at the 
point of forking into Dog ! 

And last of all the Mammals to the manor born, I see 
and sing 

The Black : the Austral Man : an offshoot from an an- 
cient Asian Man-branch of the Zoologic Tree, de- 
pending, withering, decaying, almost leafless now : 
a figure in the grand Dissolving Panorama of the 
Earth evanishing into a memory : a myth : a mys- 
tery for aye ; 



244 . AUSTRALIA. 

The Black : brown-mud-black skinned : thin-armed, 
thin legged, and bottle-pouched : small-handed 
and small-footed : finger-toed : dark, cavern-eyed, 
flat-nosed, maw-mouthed : with burnt-black wav- 
ing hair and full crisp beard : well-shouldered and 
high-chested : savoring of phosphorus : keen-vis- 
ioned, sharp-eared, agile, and alert: precocious 
babe : aborted man : a sweenied, swarthy, savage 
scrub : a weasened, wolfish wanderer forever on the 
wallaby : on : on : himself, and his belongings all 
and singular, into the Never-Never Country of 
. Eternity! 

His Gin : a woman, wife : Symbolic here of all per- 
taining to the woman-half of his humanity : his 
loves and hates, his jealousies and feuds, his vir- 
tues and his vices as a Man in his totality among 
his kind : especially, his partiality for adipose 
combined with femininity to supplement his want 
of fat combined with masculinity ! 

His Boo-hoop : babe : first cradled in a hole scooped in 
the warm dry sand : then folded in a bag of 'pos- 
sum skin and slung upon the mother's back : then 
set astride a shoulder or her neck : and then, as 
soon as it can crawl, provided with a digging-stick 
and started out in search of roots and frogs : to 
feast or famish as it may henceforth ! Symbolic 
here of all the stages of his growth from birth to 
premature maturity : his struggle for existence in 
his wretched world from first to last : escaping this 
destruction to encounter that : his cradle and his 
grave the self-same desert sand : his life a ling'ring 
living burial ! 

His Coo-ee : a peculiar call : Symbolic here of all his 
mimicries and mutterings : his speech, his songs, 
his war-cries, and his dying groans : Primaeval 
Man Mort-Mumblings : incoherent : lapsing into 
whisperings : lip-quiverings : death-rattleings : and 
there an end ; 



AUSTRALIA. 245 

His Chir-rin-chir-rie : knocking out the upper front 
teeth : Typic here of all his mutilations and dis- 
figurements : his scoring, scarring, gashing, slash- 
ing, piercingj lopping, clipping — all ; 

His Yin-ka: string of human hair three hundred yards 
in length wound round the waist: A symbol here 
of all his dress and ornaments : of skins and 
feathers, bone and shell, bark, rush, and hair ; 

His Nar-doo-flour : the crushed seeds of the Clover- 
fern : the one extreme of his variety of food : a 
Stranded Whale the other ! This, the latter, haply 
once within a life-time : an Australian Oil-strike ! 
incommensurable, overwhelming, maddening ! ex- 
alting and expanding for the moment the emaciat- 
ed famine-haunted wretch into an open-handed 
and big-hearted benefactor of mankind ! fire-sig- 
naling afar to share his feast the very enemy per- 
haps whom but the night before he sought to stun 
in sleep and rob of his prized kidney -fat ere he 
recover and awake to linger through succeeding 
days and nights in an unutterably agonizing 
death ! The Fern and Whale symbolic here of all 
his food ; 

His Gun-yah : Wur-ley : Mi-am : lean-to, hut : but one 
remove from the Bornean ape's arboreal retreat : 
Symbolic here of all his artificial bields and shel- 
terings against the winter's cold and rain ; 

His Won-guim : Boomerang of play : an Eucalyptus- 
leaf-like toy of wood : a form compounding bend 
and twist, convexity, and flattening, ( suggesting a 
propeller-screw with parabolic blades, ) and when 
impelled by skill, rotating and revolving in a most 
eccentric orbit : going through the air a hundred 
yards and half again as far and coming back : 
alighting as it has been willed behind the thrower's 
back or at his feet : gyrating, swirling, forward, 
backward, upward, downward, like a merry waltz- 
2F 



24j6 AUSTRALIA. 

ing thing of life and play : a rondo of the mirth 
and joys of youth reechoing among the tombs 
and sepulchres of the inimitably vast God's-acre 
of Australia I Symbolic here of all his toys and 
games and sports besides : among them, notably, 
his Weet-weet : Kangaroo -rat : second only to the 
Won-guim as a toy-projectile : antedating the Fish- 
bullet as a special form designed to meet the least 
resistance in the air ; 

His Barn-geet : Boomerang of work and war : Sym- 
bolic here of all his weapons, tools, and imple- 
ments : of wood and bone and stone and shell : his 
spears and clubs : his Wammerah, or Throwing- 
stick, increasing wondrously the length and lever- 
age of his right arm : his axes, chisels, knives, and 
hooks : his fire-drills, baskets, nets, and weirs ; 

His song-and-dance Cor-rob-bor-ee : by firelight in the 
forest : Naked women seated in a semicircle sing- 
ing and hand-beating on a skin stretched tight be- 
tween their spread knees : Leader in the centre 
with two signal-sticks, click-clacking, striking, wav- 
ing : droning, humming, chanting : pacing to and 
from the women and the dancers : Dancers deck- 
ed with bent-bough anklets, 'possum pinafore, and 
ringed and streaked and striped with pipeclay : 
simulating skeletons : with clacking sticks : ar- 
ranged in line or lines in front of women : all to- 
gether as a unit swaying, bending, jerking ,twi st- 
ing : leaping this way, leaping that way : chanting, 
clacking : kicking, jumping, stamping : fast and 
faster : loud and louder : high and higher : imi- 
tating dingo, emu, kangaroo, or curaduck : enact- 
ing fishing-, hunting-, warring-, wiving-scenes : 
fantastically, diabolically : culminating in the 
highest leap and loudest shout of all : then disap- 
pearing in the dark: ere long to reappear in a 
new guise, with voice and vigor as before : Sym- 
bolic here of all his concertings and caperings in 



AUSTRALIA. 247 

the expression of his social pleasures, savage rage, 
religious rite, and eldritch demonism : in the ex- 
expression of his wild and weird environment : in 
emulation of the Laughing Jackass, Bird, and 
Dingo, Beast : in rivalry of each and every living 
thing that has involved the Never-Never Country 
in its flesh and blood ; 

His Be-a-ma : exchanging wives : A symbol here of 
all his marriage customs and restrictions, and his 
complicated Tamil system of relationships ; 

His Kidney-fat Diablery : the chief of all the involu- 
tions of his horrible environment into his mind 
and body and its evolutions thence in horrible im- 
aginings and practices : his desert life depriving 
him of all his adipose save that about his kidneys 
and their capping glands : his hunger forcing him 
betimes to feed upon his fellows and discovering 
to him the luscious morsels of the loins: his mur- 
derous propensities and anthropophagous pro- 
clivities becoming growth-inwrought, developing 
in this or that direction thence to the most diabolic 
of extremities ! Symbolic here of all his sorceries 
and mystic demonism : his Mur-ro-kun : a magic 
bone ; his Bulk or Mur-ra-mai : a talisman or 
magic stone : imparting a mysterious and awful 
pow'r to its possessor, a Co-rad-jee, doctor, priest, 
or sorcerer : a piece of quartz, chalcedony, a crys- 
tal, glass decanter-stopper, or the like : concealed 
especially from woman's eye: enclosed in yarn 
and net, hid under arm-pit, in the mouth, or other- 
wise : The austral correspondent of the Cannel 
Coal of Dr. Dee, the mythic Urim-Thummim of 
Joe Smith, the meteoric Blackstone of the Kaaba 
of Mecca, and the like ; 

His Ten-di : judgment council : Symbol here of all 
his rude and crude ipnaginings of law and govern- 
ment : his punishments with Waddy Blow upon 
the Head : Spear Thrust through Arm and Leg : 



248 AUSTRALIA, 

and chief of all his Ordeal of Spears : the culprit 
with a narrow shield exposed to a succession of 
swift-fiying well-directed darts: or slain outright 
or famous ever after for his braverj'^ and skill ; 

His Koot-chee : mythic monster : many-visaged, many- 
voiced : chaotic concept of the baleful in the form 
of a tormenting and destroying devil : growling in 
the thunder : moving in the whirlwind : building 
fires in the Aurora Austral : causing sickness ; 
carrying contagion : material and immaterial : to 
be opposed as well as with won-guims as with 
witchery : Symbolic here of all his gods and 
devils fashioned by his wants and wishes, hopes 
and fears, in the mirage of his imagination : mir- 
roring eternally the desert wilds and wastes : The 
mental correspondents of the malagrugous Mex- 
ique images conceived but not yet cut in black 
basalt: as well, the air-drawn monsters of the 
drunkard and the maniac ; 

His Moo-ra-moo-ra : smallpox: Typic here of all the 
ills to which his flesh is heir and thief; 

His Grin-ka-ri: flayed corpse: A symbol here of all 
his rites and customs appertaining to the dead ; 

His Mirrn-yonk : shell and refuse heap, or kjokkenmod- 
ding : last of all his monuments and memories to 
disappear : incorporate indissolubly with his island 
sepulchre ! 

The Whole : the Fauna of the Austral World in its to- 
tality : the Shadows of the Fauna of the world be- 
sides commingling and compounding in peculiar 
forms : fantastic, weird, grotesque : familiar, 
strange, chimerical : a hashish-dream menagerie ! 

I see and sing 

The Slayer and Successor of the Black : 

The Master of the Austral World to-day : 

The Problem of the Centuries to Come : 

The CORNSTALK: Man compounding millions of 



AUSTRALIA. 249 

mankind : from all the airts the wind can blow : 
of all conditions, colors, creeds, shapes, sizes, aims, 
and ends : invading, over-running, and appropriat- 
ing : dwelling, killing, tilling : digging, delving : 
muliplying, ramifying, modifying all ; 

The CORNSTALK: Man involving and evolving an 
enlarging universe : inverting, and everting : in- 
teracting : many, one : colonial, intercolonial : de- 
pendent, independent : national, and international : 
corporeal and incorporeal: Composite Cosmopoli- 
tan ; 

The CORNSTALK : Man of the To-Day expanding 
and extending into the To-Morrow's Homo-Ulti- 
mate : inheriting the World within his Blood and 
Brawn and Brain and parting with his Birthright 
only with the Mooning of the Earth ; 

The CORNSTALK : People-Pyramid of Austral Egypt : 
course on course contracting from a base of savage- 
ry deep-buried in the desert-sand unto an apex of 
enlightenment bright-gleaming in the aether of the 
tiptops of the Black Spur Eucalypts ; 

The CORNSTALK: People-Poem in a Word: the 
Kalevala of the Suomema of the South : the Fin- 
land, not of Frost, but Fire ! 

I see and sing 

His Grasses, Flowers, Fruits, and Grains, now fringing 
the vast sepulchre of Dingodom with mind and 
body sweets and surfeitings : now fringing Hell 
with Paradise! 

I see and sing 

His baneful weeds: Sweet-briar, Thistle, Vervaine, 

Milkweed, Sida, Furze : the Devil that aye lurks 

behind the Cross ; 

I see and sing 

His Singing, Game, and Table-birds : now frighting to 



250 AUSTRALIA. 

the Never-Never Country fast the Laughing Jack- 
ass with its eldritchness and demonism ! 

I see and sing 

His Beasts of infinite subservience and use : 

The Dog : the first slave of the Master of the World : 
the first extension of the tooth of Man into a sub- 
stitute to catch and kill for him : the point at 
which the Man -branch of the Zoologic Tree forks 
from the wholly Beast into the Barbarous: the 
first stage in the evolution of the Cosmopolitan : 
the first scene of the drama of the Hundred- 
handed son of Ouranos and Ge, Briareos ; 

The Cat: the second servant of the Master of the 
World : the first extension of the noonday sense 
of sight of Man into a substitute to guard at night 
his precious stores while he is fast asleep ; 

The Pig : the waste and kitchen refuse of the Master of 
the World compacted, purified, and put again up- 
on his pantry -shelf; 

The Rabbit and the Hare : fast-breeding, inland-press- 
ing, irrepressible : slaves that would fain be mas- 
ters : typic elsewhere of the timid, here the ter- 
rible ! out-leaping in the race for life the Kangaroo 
and Wallaby ; 

The Sheep : the first and foremost of the beasts to equal- 
ize the everchanging hot and cold winds of the 
earth : to keep the Master of the World within an 
artificial favored clime at the equator and the poles : 
now multiplying marvelously in the austral wastes 
in spite of their Sahara heat, aridity, and barren- 
ness : converting fast the Never-Never Country in- 
to Colchis — Country of the Golden Fleece ; 

The Ox : the Back and Belly of the Master of the World 
in an infinity of outside supplemental forms ; 

The Ass : the first-draft of the Drama of the Centaur : 
myth compounding Man and Horse ; 

The Camel : desert-dune incarnate : desert-junk ; 



AUSTRALIA. 251 

The Horse : the thews and muscles of ten men or more 
subordinated to the will of one : the prototype in 
an organic form of the infinity of Steel and Steam 
combined in the World-master's engines and ma- 
chinery to-day : all which I see and sing here in a 
word, 

The Iron- Horse ! 

I see and sing 

The Mob of Millions who compose 

The CORNSTALK : mythic Man : supposititious per- 
sonality : ideal individuality : the counterfeit pre- 
sentment of a multitude in one ; 

The Mob of Millions : each a Leaf upon the Man- 
branch of the Zoologic Tree : the universal Ygg- 
drasill ; 

The Mob of Millions : each an Iliad : an actual epit- 
ome of all : a sum organic of the world ! 

I see and sing 

Them in their Finite Individuality 

And Infinite ! 

One, picking cotton on the Brisbane plains : a turkey- 
foot of tribal or totemic scars upon each cheek, 
and down his forehead and his nose a line of art- 
ificial ornamental warts as big and round as peas : 
a Negro, from the western coast of Africa : sym- 
bolic of the African in his totality ; 

Another, hoeing sugar-cane hard by: his skull com- 
pressed and conified with bandages in infancy, old 
Inca-like in shape : a Black from MallicoUo, one 
of the New Hebrides : a type of all the Melanesi- 
ans; 

One, bending sail, aboard a Labor Trading Schooner : 
Yankee Stars and Stripes tattooed with other fig- 
ures on his brawny fore-arms: a Kanaka from 
Hawaii : typic of the Polynesian ; 



252 AUSTRALIA. 

Another, taking beche-de-mer in Roebuck Bay : a kris 
scar on his neck : his left eye out : a lithe Malay- 
an from Malacca : typic of the great Malayan mul - 
titude ; 

One, in the suds at CoUingwood : new-saddle hued : his 
head in shape, like the great cooling and col- 
lapsing Earth, according to the figurings of Green, 
a compromise between a sphere and tetrahedron : 
round it coiled the pigtail badge of his political 
minority : a Chinaman : symbolic of the Mongol 
third or fourth of all mankind ; 

Another, with a Trio of Gilt Balls above his door in 
Perth : an angler-fish in human guise : his head 
upheld and half turned round by a carotid an- 
eurism : a Jew from anywhere, except Jerusalem : 
a type of all the Wandering Tribes of Israel ; 

One, mining kerosene at Hartley Vale : a leather thong- 
about his wrist to fend against rheumatic joints : 
a Stonehenge Briton handed down unto to-day, 
from Basingstoke : a typic Celtic Aryan ; 

Another, mining^ silver in the Sunny Corner Mines : 
club-footed, ambidextral, deaf: a Cymric Welsh- 
man from the Clwyd : another typic Celtic 
Aryan ; 

One, personating Peace and Order in the City of the 
Plains : auroral-haired, pockmarked, pugnosed, 
long upper-lipped, and monkey-mugged : a bobby 
with a Bishop Barker in his hand, hobnobbing 
with a cattle-duffing lag : an Irishman from Inch- 
a-Goill : a third type of the Celtic Aryan ; 

Another, paper-making and fellmongering at Liverpool : 
as neckless as a fish, bow-legged, and pigeon-toed : 
a Gaelic Scot from Aughnasheen : a fourth type of 
the Celtic Aryan ; 

One, selling snuff, tobacco, and cigars in Armidale : a 
musty, mouldy shadow of the-man-that-lost-his 
found : consumptive : dieting on dugong oil : a 
Spaniard from Valencia : a typic Latin Aryan : a 



AUSTRALIA. 253 

Diego: commonly prefixed with Damned, by 
Gringo tars ; 
Another, making wine at Germantown : forever swal- 
lowing the Adam's apple in his neck alternately 
with twirling his moustache : a Frenchman from 
Boulogne : another typic Latin Aryan ; 
One, bullock-punching on the Cambridge downs of 
Kimberly : a stammerer, and stutterer : afflicted 
with St. Vitus' dance : a sore affliction at a pinch : 
a Portuguese from Santerem : a third type of the 
Latin Aryan ; 
Another, fiddling in the streets of Ballarat: a 
green silk blind before his sightless eyes, and gol- 
den buttons in his ears, in lieu of rings : an old 
Italian of Mantua: a fourth type of the Latin 
Aryan ; 
One, shipping copper-ore at Wallaroo: strabismic to 
accommodate a wryneck twisting to the right and 
a peculiar nasal turning to the left ; a Swede from 
Gottenburg : a typic Teuton Aryan : a Gringo, in 
the Diego lingo of the sea ; 
Another, in the office of the telegraphic company at 
Palmerston : his left arm off at upper third of 
humerus : homesick : a Dane from Elsinore : an- 
other typic Teuton Aryan ; 
One, mining gold in Bendigo : a flaxen-haired Apollo 
Belvidere: tormented with a tapeworm for ten 
years : a Dutchman from the Hague : a third type 
of the Teuton Aryan ; 
Another, rolling iion at the Eskbank works in Lithgow 
Vale : Thor-bearded, shaggy-browed, loquacious, 
bibulous, arid quarrelsome when drunk : an old 
Norwegian from Hammerfest: a fourth type of the 
Teuton Aryan ; 
One, building a great iron railway bridge across the 
broad Hawkesbury : long, lank, leathery, and lan- 
tern-jawed: a mule-kick scar between his eye- 
2G 



264 AUSTRALIA. 

brows : Sankey-hymn-book singing, and profane : 
a Yankee from Sang Hollow, Pennsylvania : a fifth 
type of the Teuton Aryan ; 

Another, pen -depicting a new Gonodactyl from Port 
Jackson : laying his forefinger to the left side of 
his nose, in emphasizing '^ Yes ; I know," or as a 
sign in lieu thereof: a Holstein cowlick over his 
right eye cascading his unkempt, long, silvery 
locks into a fishtailed fountain playing silently and 
ceaselessly upon his thinking-heated brow : a Ger- 
man from iVschafFenburg : a sixth type of the Teu- 
ton Aryan ; 

One, in the parliament of New South Wales : round- 
headed and round-bodied : pinkish-skinned : well- 
clad : the parting of his hair, moustache and 
beard, midway between his ears sj'^mbollically in- 
dicating him in his essential legislative individual- 
ity : divided into hemispheres, a Northern and a 
Southern, or, a Home and a Colonial : a positive 
and negative : '' My word ! " one minute, and " No 
fear ! " the next : an Englishman from Liverpool : 
a seventh typic Teuton Aryan ; 

And all the millions of the people of Australia besides 
in the infinity of the expression of their individ- 
uality : the all-involving one idea of existence : 
each to be 

What he has never been ; 

What he is not ; 

And what none other than himself can be — 

^ further evolution of the Finite in Himself into the 
Infinite ! 

The Lifer : for the term of his existence in the flesh a 
banished branded man : a gnarled and crook'd and 
twisted scrub, transported from the densely crowd- 
ed forest of the British Islands to the open empty 
wastes of Topsiturvia, to straighten out, untwist, 
and grow erect : to be reversed from bad to good 



AUSTRALIA. 255 

if not by homilies and hulks, by the machinery 
that turns and twists the Earth itself and the in- 
finity of circumvolving spheres — or killed in the 
attempt ; 

The Lifer : haunted by a hopeless hope : a happy 
dream by night, a harrowing thought by day : to 
go back Home : to breathe the air of England and 
of Liberty : to be a Man: the sky above his head, 
the earth beneath his feet, and North or South, 
or East or West, an open way for him to walk in 
manly strength and pride ; 

The dread Bushranger: austral outlaw: Robin Hood: 
Frank James : succeeding the extinct Thylacoleo 
as the greatest of the austral beasts of prey ; 

The Larrikin : the Hoodlum of the Austral World : 
( The word from Lark, the same as Harh ! the out- 
cry of our language-forming sires on hearing the 
melodious and joyous bird high overhead, a tiny 
twinkling song-star in the sun-lit heavens ; thence, 
through metaphoric Lark, a noun, extreme hilarity, 
and Lark, a verb, to riot — or, from On a Lark, Out 
Larking, and the like, to the last phase of its devel- 
opment and lowest stage of degradation, Larrikin ! 
a word that may be likened to the Kangaroo, de- 
veloped down and backward into a monstrosity ! ) 

The old Beachcomber: gamit, grim-visaged, eager -eyed, 
tar-smelling, and tattooed : a ship-deserter, runa- 
way : the jetsam and the flotsam of the waters of 
the world in human guise ; 

The Whaler : of the Murrumbidgee and the Darling : 
when it suits his pleasure and convenience, a dolce- 
far-niente outcast in the fertile valleys of the rivers 
named, beyond the running of a warrant or a writ : 
a fisher, hunter, cut-throat, thief, or what he will, 
time, place, and circumstance suggesting and de- 
termining: by day affrighting phantoms of re- 
morse with Thatcher's songs : by night, with 
rum ; 



256 AUSTRALIA. 

The Swagman: bed and board upon his back — or, 
having humped his drum and set out on the wal- 
laby, the austral tramp : in search of work, or, 
haply, aimless, trudging on and on into the Never- 
Never Country : lifting listlessly his hat in silent 
awe and clammy-skinned, heart-sinking introspec- 
tion while he halts before a gaunt, gigantic, ghost- 
white gum, graved with the mystic, fateful letters, 
L'-D-T: the ghostly hand of Leichhardt beckon- 
ing to him from out the yawning all-involving sep- 
ulchre beyond ! 

The sly Sundowner : swagman timing his arrival at a 
station that the time, the place, and circumstance, 
appealing to the hospitality of worthy pioneers, 
may never fail to get for him a supper, bed, and 
breakfast ere he trudge again ; 

The Bushman: eking out a weird existence in the 
spectral forest: dwelling in an endless eldritch 
dream : half in the world of Something, half in 
that of Nothing : Gunyah, his bark hovel ; SMllian, 
his bark lean-to kitchen ; Damper^ his unleavened 
bread baked in the. ashes ; Billy, his tea-kettle, uni- 
versal pot and pan and bucket; Sugar-bag, his 
source of saccharine, a bee-tree ; Pheasant, his face- 
tious metaphoric euphuism for Liar, quasi Lyre- 
bird; Fit for Fbop'ooroo, for Daft or Idiotic ; Brumby, 
his peculiar term for wild horse ; Scrubber, wild ox ; 
Nuggeting, calf-stealing ; Jumbuck, sheep, in general ; 
an Old-man, grizzled wallaroo or kangaroo ; Long- 
sleever. Bishop Barker, and Deep-sinker, synonyms of 
Yankee Schooner ; Station, Run, a sheep- or cattle- 
ranch : and Kabonboodgery — an echo of the sound 
diablery forever in his ears, from dawn to dusk of 
Laughing Jackass and from dusk to dawn of 
Dingo — his half-bird-and-beast-like vocal substi- 
tute for Very Good ; 

The Squatter : camping for a week, a fortnight, or for- 
ever, where he finds none to dispute his right : ig- 



AUSTRALIA. 257 

noring title-deeds: in blissful ignorance of judg- 
ments, liens, and mortgages : a retroversion to the 
Bedouin-nomadic stage of his forefathers on the 
desert wastes and steppes of Asia ; 

The Stockman : austral Cowboy : by the magic of a 
whip-crack herding cattle half a league away ; 

The manor-born Moonlighter : austral Guacho : fear- 
less, skillful, breakneck, rider : in the bush and in 
the open : over stones and thorough marshes : las- 
soing the Scrubber and the Brumby, when, at 
night, to slake their thirst, they leave the scrub or 
bush to find a pool, a water-hole, or billybong ; 

The Dummy : man of straw in buying land ; 

The Jackaroo : the austral Tender-foot ; 

The Cockatoo : the austral small freeholding tiller of 
the soil ; his house, belike, with roof of thatch, and 
walls compounding stones and sun-baked mud, 
whitewashed within and -out, and decked within 
with lyre-bird tails and emu eggs ; upon a shelf 
above an open hearth, a Bible, Yankee clock, and 
Clarke's blood-curdling novel: dog-eared, thumb- 
worn, brown ; his paddocks fenced with overlapp- 
ing tree-trunks, interlacing limbs, and upturned 
roots — a ghastly spectacle ! 

All, one and all the Mob of Millions who compound 
and aggregate 

The CORNSTALK : Mythic Man : 

The Laborer: 

The Miner, Metallurgist, Manufacturer ; 

The Carrier by land and sea ; 

The Builder, Engine-driver, Agriculturist; 

The Druggist, Surgeon, Counselor ; 

The Actor, Author, Editor ; 

The Soldier, Statesman, Scientist ; 

The People scattered o'er the Land, like Seeds Broad- 
cast; 

The People gathered in the Cities and the Towns, like 



258 AUSTRALIA. 

Garnered Stores — 

All, one and all, 

The Man-half and the Woman-half in One : all com- 
prehending, all-idealizing, and all-uttering. 

The BARD ! 

I see and sing 

The Evolution of the Austral World, 

Effected by 

The CORNSTALK : the Norwegian Thor turned topsy- 
turvy with the world around him : crushing not 
the skulls of the Frost-giants of the North, but, 
strange mutation ! hurling his fell hammer at the 
Fire-gods of the South : the Warmth, the Light, 
and Life of Muspellheim : his olden good gods 
metamorphosed into monstrous fiends ! 

I see and sing 

The Evolution of the Austral World 

In general and in detail : 

From Desert to Domain ; 

From Mallee-scrub to Orange-grove ; 

From Cockatoo to Cock and Hen ; 

From Kangaroo to Cots wold Sheep ; 

From Black to White : from Lowest Type to Highest 

Type of Man ; 
From Solitude to Cityful ; 
From Want to Wealth ; 
From Bunya-bunya seed to Bread ; 
From Billybong to Beer ; 
From 'Possum Pinafore to Silken Gown ; 
From Boomerang to Armstrong Gun ; 
From Shanksmare to the Iron-horse ; 
From Message-stick to Universal Mail ; 
From Red-hand-daubing to Photography ; 
From Coo-ee-ing to Telegraphing round the World ; 
From Song-and-Dance Corrobboree to Parliament ; 
From Noon-day Nightmares to Grand Galleries of Art ; 



AUSTRALIA. 259 

From Agony to Anaesthesia ; 

From Memory to Monument* 

From Laxity to Law ; 

From Demonism to Darwinism ; 

From Chaos-Speech to Kosmos-Song ; 

From all the Negatives of the sepulchral No-Man's- 
Land, the Never-Never Country, to the Positives of 
Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Australia 
South, Australia West — collectively. 

The Hand Five-fingered of the Mistress of the Seas that 
grasps the Grand Prize of the Southern World; 

The Paw Five-taloned of the Lion of the North that 
takes the Lion's Share of the Huge Carcass of the 
South ; 

The YANKEELAND beneath the Southern Cross ; 

Among the Nations of the Earth, a Nation of Enlight- 
enment, the blazon of whose glorious banner has 
not been an empty boast, ADVANCE ! 



' The first edition of this poem was published in 1886, at 
Greenesburgh, Pennsylvania, in the form of an octavo pamph- 
let containing 40 pages. It was dedicated " to the venerable 
Dr. George Bennett, F.L.S., F.Z.S., Etc., of Sydney, New 
South Wales : to whom the world is indebted for much that is 
known of Australia ; and to whom the world bows in grateful 
recognition." The notes included a number of quotations 
from the poetical works of Thomas Bracken, Henry Ken- 
dall, Charles Thatcher, Adam Lindsay Gordon, and others. 

'^ On the Wallaby : An Australianism signifying travel- 
ing, wandering, tramping, on the go : wallaby being a generic 
term of native origin for a number of kangaroo-like animals 
specifically distinguished as the rock-wallaby, black-gloved- 
wallaby, nail-tailed-wallaby, and the like. 

* Cowan's Canon : The weird and picturesque gorge in 
which the new bridle-path has been made from Katoomba to 
the Caves of Jenolan. Dingo-haunted : laughing-jackass-echo- 
ing : tree-fern-shaded : orchid-scented : glow above and gloom 
below : here an overhanging iron-stained cliff": there a multiple 
waterfall : presenting a novel interest and fascination at every 



260 IN NAGASAKI. 

turn of the tortuous path descending nine hundred feet in a 
beeline distance of half a mile. So named, in July, 1885, by 
Mr. George E. Cook, of Lithgow, N. S. W., Superintendent of 
Roads, while on the wallaby with the writer : exploring, geol- 
ogizing, botanizing : hungering, thirsting : every muscle ach- 
ing: burning the bush of Australia to make the charcoal for 
the preceding sketch. 

* The stain produced by the decomposition of the carcase 
of a man, a sheep, or other animal of equal bulk, on the sandy 
plains of Australia, is discernible for many years — practically 
indelible. 



AT BEIRUT. 



Hard by the spot St. George be-swinged the 
Dragon. 



THE GERMAN WAR- GOD. 



The triune war-god of the German creed, 

Old Kaiser Wilhelm, Bismarck, and Von Moltke. 



NEW JERSEY. 



Pervaded with the perfume of the peach. 



THE COLUMN AND THE ARCH. 



The grandest monument of Greece, the Column ; 
The grandest monument of Rome, the Arch. 



IN NAGASAKI 



A Petrarch in Japan ? Impossible ! 
And wheresoe'er the end of passion is 
Attained before the evolution of 
The feelings into fancies hath begun. 



THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OF GREENE. 261 



THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OF GREENE} 



It was the turning of the year. Before a glowing grate, 
In my good, old mother's cushioned chair, alone, at 

ease, I sate ; 
At my elbow, a stand, and a crystal cup, whence aris' 

ing, a rare perfume 
Commingled its might with the golden light, in the 

glamour of the room. 

The merry bells of the passing sleigh had ceased their 

tinkling sound ; 
The purr of the cat on the rug had passed into silence, 

in sleep profound ; 
The click ! click ! alone was heard, of a clock in the 

corner encased, — 
Like a grotesque and grim personation of Time, — to 

mimic the heart in my breast ! 

When hark ! as the clock struck twelve, a knock ! 

Come in, come in, I cried ; 
And the king of good fellows came bounding in, and 

sat down by my side. 
A light in each eye like a living star, shedding gleams 

from heaven on earth. 
And a smile on his lips circling round and round, like 

a planisphere of mirth ! 

Now, away with the cares of the work-a-day world, and 

the carks of his work-a-day wife ! 
Let us live while we may, like a sunburst of light, 

through the lowering clouds of life — 
2H 



262 THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OF GREENE. 

Let US fill to the brim and drain to the dregs, and the 

de'il take the golden mean, — 
Come, give us a. toast! My royal guest said — To the 

Brave, Old Burg of Greene ! 

To the brave, old burg of Greene ! Aye, aye ; to the 

brave, old burg of Greene ! 
The dearest spot in the wide, wide world, the loveliest 

ever seen ! 
Where the air, with the breath of the living, is sweet, 

as if violets did abound, 
And the very earth, with the dust of the dead, is holy, 

holy ground ! 

Aye, aye, let us drink to the brave, old burg, our all in 
all on earth, 

That bears a name, and embodies a fame, was won by 
well-tried worth ; ^ 

And let us swear, as our glasses clink, the day will nev- 
er be seen. 

When the spirit will die among her sons, of " the con- 
quering genius, Greene ! " ^ 

Good hap befall the man of mark, who leads an honest 
life. 

And, in good time, takes a woman of worth to be his 
wedded wife ; 

That in their home, the brave, old burg may ever re- 
new her youth, 

And wax, as the seasons come and go, in virtue, love, 
and truth ! 

And evil hap befall Nay, nay ! this is nor time 

nor place. 
To wish a woe, or wreak a wrong, on the vilest of the 

race ; 



THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OF GREENE. 263 

For why, God wot, it is the tide, the turning of the 

year, 
Of peace and good will unto all, and universal cheer ! 

Then let the toast go round and round. To the brave, 
old burg of Greene ! 

Among the fair towns of the land, a crowned and scep- 
tred queen. 

Enthroned upon a mighty hill, in token of her force. 

Like England's virgin queen of old, astride a warrior's 
horse ! 

Ha ! a blessing hath he in his birthright, who points to 

this town as the place of his birth ! 
Ha ! a blessing hath he in his fireside, who sees, in this 

cluster of earth-stars, his hearth ! 
Ha ! a blessing hath he in his winding-sheet, that is 

wrapped in the good, old town ! 
And a blessing hath he in his epitaph that gives and 

takes renown ! 

St. Clair, the Brave but Unfortunate ! * And many a 

sacred score. 
Whose names are echoed from out the earth, of the 

glorious days of yore, — 
Whose names are muttered by marble mouths, or 

mumbled by mutes in the sod. 
Where the sink is seen, and the grass is green, in the 

tear-bedewed Acre of God ! 

These are the names that are heard in the heart, when 

the name of the brave burg is spoken ! 
These are the ties that are bound in the blood, that are 

only with life itself broken ! 
These are the subtleties sunk in the soul, that are felt 

though they may hot be seen. 
Till the king of good fellowship takes up the glass — 

To the brave, old burg of Greene ! 



264 THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OP GREENE. 

Aye, these are the words of the Wizard of Dreams, 

when the eye-lids are closing in rest. 
That raise from the depths of the sea of the mind the 

uncharted Isles of the Blest ! — 
A vision of beauty and bliss upon earth, to the eyes of 

the flesh only given. 
When Himal'ya's height comes out of the night, above 

the storm-cloud, in heaven ! 



I've wandered north and I've wandered south, in the 

world of wonders untold ; 
I've wandered east and I've wandered west, in the 

world of the New and the Old ; 
But in farthest Ind and remotest Cathay, with the girth 

of the globe between. 
The nearest spot to my heart of hearts was the brave, 

old burg of Greene ! 



There was a fabled fount of old, that drink of it who 

would, 
And wander thence for many a day by forest, field or 

flood ; 
Still must he turn, in weal or woe, to quench a burning 

thirst, 
With an enchanting second draught whence he had 

ta'en the first. 



But what is the fable but fact in disguise — a thought 
for the thing, in mask — 

Like the genie of Araby's marvelous tale, in the fisher- 
man's new-found flask ? — 

I had drunk long and deep of the magical spring, 
whence all the enchantment has been. 

When my lips were pressed to my mother's breast, in 
the brave, old burg of Greene ! 



THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OP GREENE. 265 

Ye Winds that wander round the world, oh, bring your 
sweetest li)reath, 

From hawthorn hill and violet vale, and scent-com- 
mingling heath, 

That when, with her lint-white locks ye play, and 
fevered furrows, fan, 

She may close her eyes and kiss again her babe in the 
bearded man ! 



And thou, Sun, thou. warmth of the world, here 

gleam with a summer's ray, 
In her winter of winters that knows no spring, and set 

far hence the day. 
When the snow that is piled on the trembling height, 

in an avalanche will start, 
A-nd deep in the Valley of Shadows below, encase in 

ice her heart I 



Oh, who will not drink to the brave, old burg that em- 
bodies his being in others ? — 

The love that links, from the life-lighted dawn, the 
hearts of sons and mothers ! 

The love that links, from the white- veiled vow, the 
hearts of man and woman ! 

The love that links, from a first-born's cry, the hearts 
of all that are human ! 



Oh, who will not drink to the brave, old burg, in which 
his being is bounded — 

Not a sentient sphinx in uncertain suspense, between 
two seas unsounded, — 

Nor a riddle relation 'twixt matter and force, in mysti- 
cal, mind-mixing mud, — 

But a man among children and women and men, in 
flesh and bone and blood ! 



266 THE BRAVE, OLD BUEG OF GREENE. 

Oh, who will not drink to the brave, old burg, the rare 

old burg, and the dear. 
When the Spirit of Peace and Good Will unto All, at 

the turning of the year. 
In the guise of the King of Good Fellows will come, 

and sit in the open heart's room, 
And recall with a toast, in the mind of its host, What 

a heaven on earth it is, Home ! 



Home ! the brave, old burg of Greene ! Among the 

hoary hills. 
Where the Appalachian mountains appear in a form 

my fancy fills — 
An outcast King Lear of the Mountains of Earth, in 

the storm wand'ring, wasted and worn. 
While the Alps and Himal'yas, in pitiless pride, share 

the crown from his temples torn ! * 



Home ! the brave, old burg of Greene ! Among the 

humid hills. 
Where the Mississippi's roar is heard, in the ripple of 

the rills — 
The Father of Waters who warrants the word, of the 

Stars and Stripes unfurled. 
Come, ye hungry and homeless, wherever ye be, here's 

a welcome to the world ! 



Home ! the brave, old burg of Greene ! Where, afar, 

in the untold past, 
The mammoth strode in the wild, wild wood, like a 

whirlwind in muscle amassed ; 
Until hark ! to the roar of the last of his race, as the 

Era of Mind began, 
With the burning brand and the flint-flaked barb, in 

the earth-freed hand of Man ! ® 



THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OF GREENE. 267 

Home ! the brave, old burg of Greene ! Where, anear, 

in a later age, 
The Redskin followed the leaf-turned track, a wolf-head 

war to wage ;, 
Till Guyasootha sank in gore, the bravest of the 

brave, 
And the tomahawk and the scalping-knife were laid in 

the warrior's grave ! ' 



Home ! the brave, old burg of Greene ! In the circle 
of vision set. 

Where the armies of England and France of old, in 
bloody battle met; 

Oh, fell the day, when the Lion at eve, all red, with 
gore and spent. 

Uprooted the Lily transplanted here, and won the Con- 
tinent ! * 



Home ! the brave, old burg of Greene ! Without or 

lines or laws. 
Till George the Third declared the word, and lo ! 

Westmoreland ' was ! — 
The farthest stretch of the King's long arm, from the 

I^le of Isles in the sea. 
Till lopped off with a sword, in a new-coined word, the 

Land of Liberty ! " 



Home ! the brave, old burg of Greene ! In the very 

venue, where came 
The wondrous youth to found the worth that won the 

Father's fame ! — 
In the lowliest cot, oh, how blest is the lot of the sire 

who can say to his son, 
Here, on this spot, the deeds were wrought, that gave 

to the world, Washington ! " 



268 THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OF GREENE. 

God prosper long, in all that gives to life the charms of 

health, — 
God prosper long, in all that gives to love its untold 

wealth. 
The man that prays, God bless our Home ! and the 

woman that says, Amen ! 
When the glasses clink, and the guest and host drink, 

To the Brave, Old Burg of Greene! 



r ENVOY. 



There is a tomb, where the wealth of the world and 
the art of man are combined. 

In a rival gem to the Koh-in-oor, in the crown of im- 
perial Ind ; 

In whose guarded glory, the senses sink, in a surfeit of 
sweets, to sleep. 

And the soul in a dream sees another Taj that makes 
the wanderer weep ! 



Oh, when his wandering shall have ceased, and an end 

have come to time. 
May the humble bard, whose heart is heard reechoed 

in his rhyme. 
Be laid in the tomb of his hallowed home — in the Taj 

in fantasy seen, 
For aye to rest, among the blest, in the Brave, Old 

Burg of Greene ! 



^ This poem first appeared as the New Year's Address of 
the Greenesburgh Peess, 1st January, 1883. 



THE BRAVE, OLD BURG OF GREEKE. 269 

^Nathanael Geeene, of Rhode Island, a Major General of 
distinction during the Eevolution. 

^From a poem by Philip Feekeau, the Poet of the Eevo- 
lution. 

* Aethur St. Clair, a Major General of the Eevolution, the 
Belisarius of America. He is buried in the cemetery which 
bears his name in Greenesburgh. 

^Geologically speaking, the Alleghany or Appalachian 
Mountains are infinitely older than the Alps and the Himala- 
yas, and are estimated to have been, at one time, over six miles 
in height. Nothing now remains but a wasted and disjointed 
skeleton of their former greatness. 

^An imaginary account of the destruction of the last of 
the mammoths is given in the initial poem of the writer's h<orig 
and Story in Southwestern Pennsylvania, 12mo., Greenesburgh, 
Pa., 1876. 

' For a brief account of the distinguished Eedskin warrior, 
GuYAsooTHA, and a number of the most thrilling episodes of 
the " wolf-head war " waged in the Forks of the Ohio, the Eiv- 
er of Blood, see ibid, sparsim. 

^ An account also of the incidents of this fateful war is giv- 
en in the volume referred to. 

'The accent of this word in Pennsylvania is invariably on 
the second syllable : in England, on the first. More, being a 
form of mare, meer, mere, or mael, ( as in maelstrom, ) meaning 
tke sea, a lake, or other similar body of water, the American 
pronunciation is preferable to the English, laying as it does 
the stress on the more important of the descriptive syllables, 

i^The county of Westmoreland was erected just before the 
breaking out of the war of the Eevolution, and is remarkable 
for being the first county formed west of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains and the last by the fiat of a British king. The lines of 
the poem, accordingly, are literally correct. For further on the 
subject, see the volume referred to above. 

^^The theatre of many of the remarkable actions of the 
early manhood of Washington was in Southwestern Pennsyl- 
vania : notably while on his mission to the French on the Al- 
legheny, and while serving under Beaddock and BovQrET, 
See volume referred to, for particulars. 

21 



270 AT GETTYSBURG. 



AT 'GETTYSBURG. 



"The Battle of Gettysburg, as an agency in determining 
the result of the contest between the Government and its as- 
sailants was the most important of the war [ of 1861-5. ] It 
was the beginning of the end. The little crown of saplings 
which Pickett made the mark towards w^hich his troops were 
to aim, and which a part of them did actually reach, has been 
styled ' the high- water mark of the rebellion.' The star which, 
at that moment, had appeared in the ascendant, began to pale 
and move to its setting."— Samuel P. Bates : Martial Deeds of 
Pennsylvania, p. 325. 



With low-bent head and wonder-lighted eyes, 
The soldier listened to the story of 
My wayward wand'ring twice around the world ; 
And therein of the strange, the wonderful. 
And the sublime of every sea and land. 
It was my good or evil hap to make 
A part of my existence evermore : 
A myriad of match-like memories. 
Betimes to kindle feelings of delight. 
Inflame the passions of my bosom, and 
Illume the mystic midnight of my mind, — 
Now, with weird shimmering auroral dreams ; 
Anon, with flashing incandescent thoughts — 
The lightning-scissored silhouettes of God 
Within the storm-rack of the intellect ! 



My tale of travel told, the veteran, 
Tumultuously moved, a moment stood 
With heaving bosom and with trembling lip ; 
Then, grasping my right hand, and glancing from 



AT GETTYSBURG. 271 

My eyes to Heaven as his gathered thoughts 
Found utterance in gesture, look and speech, 
Pronounced these words with solemn emphasis : 
" My friend ! But to have been where you have 

been, 
And to have seen what you have seen, by God ! 
I would have been a louse upon your head ! " 



This happened hence a yearor more. Since then, 

The soldier and his speech have haunted nie ; 

And ever and anon I find myself 

Confronting him in fancy with a change 

Of parts upon the world-wide stage of life — 

I having heard his story, as he mine -— 

Assuming his emotion as my own — 

Appropriating gesture, look, and speech — 

" My friend ! But to have been where you have 

been, 
And to have seen what you have seen, by God ! 
I would have been a louse upon your head ! " 

And why ? The soldier wore a coat of blue, 
And fought among the brave at Gettysburg ! 
While I — cruel fate ! — was far away ! 
While I, a son of Pennsylvania ! 
Was not among the first to stand or fall 
Before the foe, beneath my mother's roof 
And on her holy hearth, at Gettj'^sburg ! 
Unworthy I — the soldier's peer in age ! 
Ignoble I — the soldier's peer in strength ! 
Benothinged I — a vagabond beyond 
The pale of immortality for aye ! 



soldier of the country of my birth ! 
All would I give that I have gained within 
The worlds of wonder of the New and Old, 



272 AT GETTYSBURG. 

Had I thy history within my heart ! 
That I might thrill as I have never yet, 
While I read what is written there in blood 
I faced my country's foe at Gettysburg ! 
I fired a shot — I drove a bayonet — 
I clubbed an empty gun at Gettysburg! 
Or, glory of all glories of the earth ! 
I bore the shot and shell betattered flag — 
I bore the blood and brain bespattered flag - 
I bore the Stars and Stripes at Gettysburg ! 



Aye ! veteran of the United States ! 

All would I give that haply I have gained — 

Alone in eldritch Australasian wilds. 

Or mingling with the millions of Cathay ; 

Aghast among the Ganges' floating dead, 

Or gloating o'er the Kremlin's gems and gold ; 

Crazed 'mid the wrecks of a Biscayan storm. 

Or musing on the moonlit Amazon ; 

Racked with surroche on Andean height. 

Or swooning in New Zealand's baths of bliss ; 

Wasted with want and sickness in Brazil, 

Or surfeited with sweets in Malay-land ; 

Death-doomed before a half-drawn Niphon sword, 

Or senseless dragged from an Egyptian mob ; 

Fate-fixed across an alpine glacier-chasm, 

Or wave-washed mangled 'mid Hawaiia's crags ; 

Scaling Corea's wall against the world. 

Or stayed by storms in Patagonian wastes ; 

On the Atlantic mountained 'round with ice. 

Or Lucy's Isle within a boiling sea ; 

Before a coming South Sea waterspout. 

Or on an earthquake-shattered South Sea isle ; 

Returning the stone-staring of the Sphinx, 

Or bowed before Japan's begodded Buddh ; 

Dreaming the dream of marble of the Taj, 

Or thinking the eternal thoughts of Rome ; 



AT GETTYSBURG. 273 

Ear-turned to bulbul's song, or jaguar's scream, 

Or Wisdom's word from aged Owen's lips ; 

Within the glare of Afric's glowing sand, 

Or gloom of India's mount-enchiseled fanes ; 

Where Muni twirled the wheel that turns for aye, 

Or Plato taught the ages yet unborn ; 

Where Grecian keel conveyed the Golden Fleece, 

Or Spanish prow cut from the waves a world ; 

Where mighty Genghis conquered in the East, 

Or Cortes and Pizarro in the West ; 

Where ancient Greek and Trojan met at Troy, 

Or modern Goth and Gaul at Waterloo ; 

Amid Himal'ya's heaven-kissing heights, 

Or Halemaumau's hell-ignited fires ; 

Agape in London's inwalled wonder-worlds, — 

Elate before a list'ning Emperor, — 

Or awed at the Anointed's Holy Tomb ! — 

All ! all ! had I as thou swelled with my voice 

The shout of victory at Gettysburg ! 

All ! all ! could I as thou now say in truth, 

I share the glory of IMMORTAL MEADE ! 



^ Bead at the Camp-fire of the Grand Army of the Repub- 
lic, in Fifth Avenue Music Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Oc- 
tober 4th, 1887. 



END OF THE RIME OF A RAMBLER TWICE AROUND THE WORLD. 



LIKE FERN-LEA VES FOUND IN SHALE: 

OUTLINING LIFE 
AGAINST A WORLD TURNED INTO SUNLESS STONE. 



276 



LIKE FERN-LEA VES FOUND IN SHALE: 

OUTLINING LIFE 
A GAINST A WORLD TURNED INTO SUNLESS STONE. 



THE A TLANTOSA UR US. 



" Near the base of our Cretaceous formation, in beds which 
I regard as the equivalent of the European Wealden, the most 
gigantic forms of this order ( Dinosauria ) yet discovered have 
recently been brought to light. One of these monsters ( Atlan- 
tosaurus montmms, ) from Colorado, is by far the largest land 
animal yet discovered ; its dimensions being greater than was 
supposed possible in an animal that lived and moved upon the 
land. It was some fifty or sixty feet in length, and, when 
erect, at least thirty feet in height. It doubtless fed upon the 
foliage of the mountain forests, portions of which are preservt 
ed with its remains." — Prof. 0. C. Marsh : Popular Science 
Monthly, vol. xii, p. 524. 



Indubitable dinosaur, Atlantosaurus, hail ! 
Thou, gecko aggrandized into a quadrupedal whale ; 
I marvel at thy magnitude, I wonder at thy weight, 
I bow me down before thee, thou organic ultimate ! 

2J 



278 THE ATLANTO^AURUS. 

Big, bulky, Brobdingnaggian beast ! exceeding in thy 

size 
All living things upon the land e'er seen by human 

eyes ! — 
Illimitable lizard, incommensurable newt. 
Interminable tadpole, inexsuperable brute ! 

Poetic symbol of the grand in heaven, earth, and hell ; 
Rhetoric type of the immense and unapproachable ; 
And all the better, too, perhaps, for being vague as 

vast. 
An image of stupendous size that cannot be surpassed ! 

There's Samuel Johnson — to what beast, besides thy- 
self on earth. 

Can he the better be compared for comprehensive 
girth ? 

Among the English bards and scribes, in his productive 
time. 

As thou among the birds and beasts of every age and 
clime ! 

So Koong-Foo-Tse, the Chinese sage — to what organic 

thing, 
Wise men wage wordy wars about, and gentle poets 

sing, 
Can he be likened better, in his philosophic bulk. 
Than to thy huge, enormous, indeterminable hulk ? 

So Genghis Khan, the ruler of one-third of all man- 
kind, 

Incomparable till the day Chance, Marsh and Cope 
combined 

To hale thy mighty carcase from the mesozoic mud. 

And put thee on thy monstrous legs as whilom thou 
hast stood. 



THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 279 

So Cuvier in science, and Napoleon in war ; 
So Shakespeare as a dramatist, and Garrick as a star ; 
And Washington, a patriot — each peerless and alone, 
Until thy mountain mass emerged from out the world 
of stone ! 

Yea, hail ! Atlantosaurus, hail ! superlatively great, 
The measure of the mightiest in thee incorporate — 
The measure of the mightiest in worth and wicked- 
ness ! — 
May thy colossal shadow never grow a shade the less ! 



THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 



The winters waxed as the summers waned. 

And colder blew the blast, 
Until land and sea appeared to be 

A common world-wide waste. 
And bird and beast to struggle ceased 

In the gathering ice encased. 

Until beneath the floor of the cave, 

To the eyes that stared within, 

The southern sun at noon sank down, 
And the northern night set in — 

The longest night without the sun's light 
The earth had ever seen. 

And over the hill-tops from the pole, 
The ice-flood came in its might. 

Till, over the mouth of the cave op'ning south, 
It rose to a towering height — 

A jutting clifl" of ice, as if 

To signal the coming of light. 



280 THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 

And one by one of hunger and cold 

The cavern-dwellers died ; 
The baby first, and the mother that nursed, 

And the stranger that made her his bride 
Till all were gone save a father of bone, 

And a daughter of skin by his side. 



Till all were gone save the two alone 
To gnaw at the frozen dead — 

At hand and foot, at breast and throat. 
And then at a ghastly head ; 

Until no more food for flesh and blood 
Remained in scrap or shred. 



When, sinking to the cavern floor. 

The famished father slept — 
In delight to dream that the sun's bright beam 

Had into the cavern crept ; 
While the daughter, as gaunt as the spectre of 
Want, 

In her horrible hopelessness, wept. 



When — was it the sun in the cave that shone. 

To open the dreamer's eyes ? 
Or the inturning light from the towering height 

Of the overhanging ice ? 
Until, at length, it gave him strength 

Upon his haunches to rise. 

" Up ! up ! my daughter ! the sun's returned ! 

Behold the light and believe ! 
The night has flown and winter gone. 

And one of us can give 
In flesh and blood the needful food 

That the other still may live! 



THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 281 

" Up ! up ! my daughter ! and drink my blood 

As it bubbles from my heart ! 
Quick ! quick ! with your lip to catch the drip 

That will follow this eager dart ! 
Quick ! quick ! that I may feel while I die 

That from thee I do not part ! " 



The father raised a flake of flint — 

It flashed above his head, 
In the shimmering light from the towering height 

Into the cavern shed ; 
It tapped the flood of his bounding blood, 

And quivered in him — dead ! 



But the daughter's lip never caught the drip 
Of the blood that followed fast. — 

While the father slept, her tears, as she wept. 
Into ice on her lids had amassed ; 

And an indrawn breath between parting teeth 
Had cooled in a corpse aghast ! 



O doubly deluded dreamer of old, — 

Sacrificing thyself to save 
A life that had flown before thine own, — 

Sleep, in thy hillside cave, 
Till the melting height of the ice in the light 

Has fallen and closed thy grave ! 



Sleep, with the flint between thy ribs. 
Beside thy daughter's bones, 

Until the last of the ice has swept past 

And scored above thee the stones — 

Recording the date of thy self-wrought fate, 
With gruesome, grinding groans ! 



282 A PRE-HISTORIC INCIDENT. 

Sleep, in the dust that gathers where'er 
Time gnaws with tireless tooth, 

Until the sage, in a future age. 

In imparting his wisdom to youth, 

Shall leave logic and lore, and point to the score 
In the stone, in tracing the truth. 



Sleep, in the distant poet's dream 

Of the evolution of art. 
Till he shall have passed like an echoing blast, 

In life performed his part — 
Indelibly wrought in the score his thought, 

And hid in the stone his heart ! 



Sleep ! sleep ! with the sanctified sires of old, 

And never, never wake, 
To learn how vain are the dreams of man 

That dies for another's sake. 
Lest that noblest end to be attained 

Mortal man nevermore mav make ! 



THE SAVAGE MOTHER AND THE CAVE BEAR? 



A PRE-HISTORIC INCIDENT. 



With antlers interlocked and fast, two elks embattling 
stood. 

Their flanks agape with every gasp, their dewlaps drip- 
ping blood ; 



A PRE-HISTORIC INCIDENT, 283 

While, leaderless, their scattered herds ranged 'round 
in doubt and fear, 

Pursued by gaunt and gurly wolves that gathered far 
and near ; 

While crows flit through the limbs overhead, with an 
impatient caw, 

And hovered o'er the trembling prongs with out- 
stretched beak and claw. 

When hark! the shout of savages, repeated west and 
east. 

Announced the coming of a horde to share the forest 
feast ! 



Anon, the weaker of the elks sank lifeless to the 
ground, 

And brought the stronger to his knees, their heads to- 
gether bound ; 

When, quick as hunger thinks and acts, in crow, and 
wolf, and man. 

The gathered throng upon the twain to feast and fight 
began. 

The crows, upon the antlers perched, picked at the clos- 
ing eyes ; 

The wolves, upon their haunches set, pulled at the life- 
less thighs ; 

While, armed, one with a jasper knife, another with a 
dart. 

The savage horde the hamstrings cut and pierced the 
living heart. 

Then, with a shout that stilled the crow and hushed 
the wolf in dread, 

The wild men leaped upon the elks — the living and 
the dead — 

And smote the crow and speared the wolf, till, driven 
from the prey, 

A circling fire of crackling wood kept them in fear 
away. 



284 . A PRE-HISTORIC INCIDENT. 

Anon the horde upon the ground, with greedy, greasy 
jaws. 

Sate thoughtless of all else besides the filling of their 
maws, 

When o'er the embers of the fire neglected in the feast, 

There strode an unexpected guest, a huge and mons- 
trous beast — 

A bear, from out the mountain-side's cavernous bat- 
hung pit ! 

A mockery to manhood's might, a wonder to his wit ! 

The roar from out the monster's throat such sudden 

terror gave, 
As if the thunder of a storm had bellowed from a 

cave! 
The savages, in wild affright, fled far into the wood, 
Nor turned to see, save each to learn if he might be 

pursued — 
Save one, a naked suckling that had from its mother 

crept, 
And, while she feasted on the flesh, upon the warm 

hide slept. 

But hark ! what fearful shriek is that, that pricks the 

monster's ear, 
Just as the baby wakes against the cold nose of the 

bear ? 
It is the mother backward bound, heart- wrung with 

grief and wild. 
To snatch from out the jaws of death the future in her 

child ! 



The embers crossed, the mother stooped, and seized a 

glowing brand, 
Then leaped before the monster's face, and made a 

threatening stand. 



A PRE-HISTORIC INCIDENT. 285 

The monster on its hind feet rose, and, with uplifted 
paws. 

Stood like a huge hide-bearded man, and oped its aw- 
ful jaws. 

Between the ragged rows of teeth, the mother thrust 
the brand, 

And snatched the baby from the ground, with an uner- 
ring hand ; 

And while the monster crunched the fire, a pain-dis- 
tracted beast, 

The mother passed beyond pursuit, her baby on her 
breast ! 



A mother's love ! Oh, it is this, in the eternal 

strife. 
That links the Future with the Past in everlasting 

life! 



1 According to Vogt, every gradation between the Cave 
Bear and the common species, Ursus ardos, may be traced ; 
while Busk asserts that the remains of the bear, found in the 
British caves and gravels, is identical with the Grizzly Bear of 
America. In this country, there are two fossil species, U. 
americanus and U. ainplidens, found in the southern part of the 
United States. 

" The Grizzly is the most ferocious and terrible of all 
American animals. He exercises absolute terrorism over every 
living creature that comes in his way. • It is said that even the 
hungry wolf will flee at the sight of his track, and no animal 
will venture to touch a deer that has been killed and left by 
him. His strength is such that, even the powerful bison falls 
an easy prey, and a single blow from one of his paws has been 
known to remove the entire scalp from a man's head. He is 
the only member of his family that will venture to attack man 
unchallenged, but it is said that he will retreat at the scent of 
a man, if he can do so unobserved." — W. E. Simmons, Jr. 

2K 



286 ATLANTIS. 



ATLANTIS. 



" Among the great deeds of Athens, of which recollection 
is preserved in our books, there is one that should be placed 
above all others. Our books tell us that the Athenians de- 
stroyed an army that came across the Atlantic ocean, and inso- 
lently invaded Europe and Asia, for this sea was then navi- 
gable ; and beyond the straits where you place the Pillars of 
Hercules was an immense island, larger than Asia and Libya 
combined. From this island one could pass easily to the other 
islands, and from these to the continent beyond. The sea on 
this side of the straits resembled a harbor with a narrow en- 
trance, but there is a veritable sea, and the land which sur- 
rounds it is a veritable continent. On this island of Atlantis 
there reigned three kings with great and marvelous power. 
They had under their domain the whole of Atlantis, several of 
the other islands, and part of the continent. At one time their 
power extended into Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, and uniting 
their whole force they sought to destroy our whole country at a 
blow, but their defeat stopped the invasion and gave entire 
freedom to the countries this side of the Pillars of Hercules. 
Afterward, in one day and fatal night, there came mighty 
earthquakes and inundations, that engulfed that warlike peo- 
ple. Atlantis disappeared, and then that sea became inaccessi- 
ble, on account of the vast quantities of mud that the engulfed 
island left in its place. — Plato. 



The sovereigns, sitting side by side, upon a central 
mound, 

Looked down upon a level plain for many miles 
around, 

Where gathering the people came in joy to cele- 
brate 

The union of the rival realms in one harmonious 
state — 



ATLANTIS. 287 

The realms that for an age had been at war without 

surcease, 
Until this happy, happy day of universal peace. 



At the right elbow of the king that ruled within the 

north. 
His son, the heir apparent, sate, a prince of proven 

worth ; 
And at the left hand of the king that ruled within the 

south. 
An only child, a princess in the budding bloom of 

youth : 
A man and woman round and full in their organic 

growth 
To join the human halves of life in a new birth of 

both ; 
A man and woman far apart, as man and woman are, 
Until their love had wrought the change to peace from 

world-wide war. 
Albeit they had never met, save in entrancing dreams, 
In which the fancy fondles with the fiction of it 

seems ; 
And never will until the sun, now rising, shall have 

set, 
And they in marriage shall have been conjoined to 

crown the fete. 



Till then, to the impassioned pair, and time4ormenting 

twain, 
How weary move the moments with the people on the 

plain — 
How dreary drag the hours along with the succeeding 

parts 
Of the procession heedless to their aching, yearning 

hearts ! 
With scarce a glance in secresy into each other's eye, 



288 ATLANTIS, 

And only once above the din a sympathetic sigh ! 
But every end to be achieved its time it must abide, 
And so the consummation must the bridegroom and 
the bride. 



First came afoot a horde of slaves, in the procession's 

van, 
With all the substances of earth that minister to man ; 
Next came a legion burdened with the products of the 

plants 
That in a myriad of shapes subserve to human 

wants ; 
And then a countless multitude with every bird and 

beast ; 
Of use to man and woman, from the largest to the 

least ; 
Then came the races of mankind, the white, and black, 

and red. 
From every quarter of the earth where man and 

woman wed ; 
Next, all the craft and tradesmen, in a dense and dusky 

cloud, 
And all the servants of the kings commingled in a 

crowd ; 
Then, borne above their children's heads, a host of 

hoary sires 
Rejoicing in the union that determined their desires ; 
Next, bearing each a babe or twain upon her bosom 

bared, 
A myriad of mothers in the great procession fared ; 
Then, hand in hand, as many men and women happ'ly 

wed, 
Their several lives eternal in the issue of their bed ; 
Then, last of all, ten thousand youths, clasping as 

many maids. 
Came whirling in a mazy waltz — and then away as 

shades : 



ATLANTIS. 



2^9 



Since, from the mountain's highest peak, the crimson 

afterglow 
Had faded into deep'ning shades of brown and black 

below. 



When lo ! the kings uprising, in a transport of delight, 

The hands of prince and princess joined with the ap- 
proach of night. 

A whisper, from the youths and maids attendant on 
the twain. 

Speeds to the guard surrounding and the crowd upon 
the plain ; 

And, hark ! the whisper bursts into a loud and length- 
ened cheer 

That rises to a mountain-top to an attentive ear ; 

And lo ! as quick as sound and sense and action can 
unite, 

There flashes from the highest point a ruddy beacon 
light; 

And as the heart beats quick with joy, from peak to 
peak afar, 

The tidings leap the valleys as the star succeeds to 
star ! 

Till, speeding thus from north to south, and from the 
east to west. 

The island of Atlantis is the Island of the Blest ! 



At length the universal shout, reechoing, decreased, 

Till in the middle of the night it altogether ceased ; 

When, in a chamber still and dark, their worth in life 
to prove. 

The lips of prince and princess met and lingered long 
in love ; 

Their interlacing eyeliids closed ; and, in the lengthen- 
ed kiss. 



290 ATLANTIS. 

The world without departed from the world within of 
bliss ! 

When suddenly the palace walls were leveled to the 
earth, 

That shook as if it struggled in the painful throes of 
birth ; 

Till, splitting here and splitting there, with each suc- 
ceeding spasm, 

A ragged rock was left apeak, encircled with a 
chasm. 

Where, separated from the world, the prince and prin- 
cess lay — 

The future severed from the past — the all in all for 
aye ! 



And upward rose the island of the future firm and 

fast^ 
As down a thousand fathoms sank the island of the 

past, 
Rent with the earthquake's force and crossed with 

many a ragged crack 
In which a flood of fire appeared like lightning in the 

rack — 
A flood of fire that dashed and splashed, till, rising in 

its might, 
The island of Atlantis was illumined with the light — 
The island of Atlantis was aflood with lava streams 
That followed fast and furious from out the ragged 

seams. 
Then, from the sea surrounding, came a wave of 

mountain height, 
A wall of sparkling splendor in the lava's vivid 

light; 
Until it met the molten mass in an engulfing flood, 
And lo! where stood Atlantis was a seething sea of 

mud I 



ATLANTIS. 291 

From which a mighty steam arose that melted in the 

sky, 
And lo ! Atlantis was an isle alone of fantasy : 



The ragged rock, within the sea of universal death, 
On which the prince and princess lay with a com- 
mingled breath ; 
Til], rising with the morrow's sun, within themselves 

they found 
The source of their salvation from the sea of death 

around ; 
And recognizing each in each a supplemental good, 
They symbolized themselves within the worship of 
their God. 



Erect, with his right hand upheld, the prince looked 
to the sky : 

And God extended from himself into infinity ; 

The princess, kneeling, with clasped hands, looked 
downward to the earth : 

And God extended from herself into a finite birth — 

A naked, new-born babe, a Christ, the Saviour of man- 
kind. 

Descended from a sire above, within the prince's mind. 



And as it has been, so it is, and shall be evermore, 
The island of Atlantis is at war from shore to shore, 
Until the halves opposing cease in the eternal strife. 
The North becoming husband and the South becoming 

wife; 
And from their union issues, as the isle sinks in the 

sea, 
The Future severed from the Past: the all in all for 

aye! 



292 PALENQUE. 



PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT IN THE PALACE OF 
PALENQUE. 



Palenque ! ^ To the archseologist, what a volume is in- 
volved in this single word Palenque, an aggregation of ancient 
art that has won the admiration of the world ! I cannot as- 
sume, accordingly, that the reader is not familiar with its 
wealth of wonders, to such an extent at least as to obviate the 
necessity of an extended introduction to the following romance 
in rhyme, written to make quick with life, sentient with under- 
standing, and sympathetic with the great heart of humanity, 
the City of the Dead of untold centuries : to people once more 
the wonderful Palace, and, deep in its mysterious recesses, to 
catch the whispered secrets that separate in the struggle for ex- 
istence the sovereign and the subject, the father and the daugh- 
ter — all, save the twain whom Love hath made bold enough to 
risk the mortality of the present for the immortality of the 
future — the life eternal in the issue of their union. 



" Thou liest ! " the king to the courtier said ; 

" For, liefer ^ than love this slave 
Of a sculptor, though fair as his genius is rare, 

My daughter would go to her grave ! " 

" My life the forfeit for falsehood be ; 

But come with me, my lord. 
And thou shalt behold, as I have told, 

In witness of my word." 

Behind the screen, pierced with the point 

Of a stealthy, quivering blade. 
The royal spy strained an eager eye 

To see as the courtier had said. 



PALENQUE. 293 

Before him stood the sculptor at work, 
With his chay-stone chisel ^ in hand, 

Upon 'a face of grandeur and grace — 
The face of the lord of the land. 

When lo ! the princess appeared in the hall, 

Upon her arm a bird. 
To which she talked and sang, as she walked, 

As if nobody saw or heard. 

Until, hark ! the sound of the sculptor at work ! — 

The parrot frightened flew 
Into the gloom of an inner room, 

And the princess abashed withdrew. 

And before the sun sank in the west. 

That stood then in midsky, 
The king commands, and the courtier stands 

Condemned for his falsehood to die. 

Four slaves outstretch his arms and legs. 

While a fifth, about his neck. 
Hangs a collar-like* stone to stifle the moan 

The victim of justice may make. 

And a sixth unsheathes a glittering .blade, 

In the exercise of his art — 
And behold ! in the gleam of the setting sun's 
beam, 

A beating, bleeding heart ! 

And while the heart throbs in the air, 

Adown the altar's height, 
The corpse is cast, agape and aghast, 

A feast for the dogs in the night ! 
2L 



294 PALENQUE. 

" So be it ever with him that speaks 
A falsehood to the king ! 

Resound the trumpet and the drum, 
And let the welkin ring ! " 



The seasons came, and the seasons went 

As speechless as they came, 
Till the royal ear again must hear 

Another tale of shame. 

" Thou liest ! " the king to the courtier said ; 

" For, liefer than lie with this slave 
Of a sculptor, though fair as his genius is rare, 

My daughter would lie in her grave ! " 

" My life the forfeit for falsehood be ; 

But ere thou decreest my doom. 
Let the king's own eye this night espy 

All that may hap in her room." 

Again the king, with the courtier, sate 

Behind the pierced screen. 
Where all that might befall in the light 

Of the full moon might be seen. 

And lo ! as the light and shade grew apart, 

The sculptor, with a torch * 
Of beetles aglow with a living lowe, 

Appeared upon the porch. 

And, with a slow and stately step. 

Passed through the curtained door, ^ 

And thence, till he stood in a thoughtful mood. 
His unfinished work before. 



PALENQUE. 295 

Then, fixing his torch to illumine his work, 

He took up his chisel of chay. 
And began to scratch about a sketch 

Upon the stone in clay. 

And thus he worked with careful skill, 

Until the middle night, 
When, crossing the floor, he passed the door. 

And disappeared with his light. 

The king and courtier, then, in stealth. 

Crept to the princess's bed, 
To find her deep in a dreamless sleep, 

As if among the dead. 

And at her side, a fretful child, 

In the innocence of youth. 
To awake in affright at the stir in the night, 

And cry with the tongue of truth ! 

And ere the morrow's rising sun 

Shone in the height of heaven. 
The courtier's warm but heartless form 

To the dogs of death was given ! 

" So be it ever with him that speaks 

A falsehood to the king ! 
Resound the trumpet and the drum, 

And let the welkin ring ! " 



The time sped ; till a good old man, 

Attendant on the throne, 
Made bold to proclaim the princess's shame, 

The country's grief and his own. 



296 PALENQUE. 

" Thou liest ! " the king to the old man said ; 

" For, liefer than bear to this slave 
Of a sculptor, a son, and -slay it as soon, 

My daughter would rot in her grave ! " 



" I am an old, old man, king. 

And dearly love I life ; 
But if I lie, so let me die 

Beneath the bloody knife. 

" But come with me to the garden wall. 
Where the grass is sere and red, 

And thou shalt behold as I have told — 
The babe in secrecy laid." 



With long and hurried strides, the king 

Into the garden sped ; 
The sod was raised ; and the old man gazed 

In vain to find the dead ! 



Upon his knees the old man fell, 
" Three days, king, I crave 

To find the corse taken hence perforce 
And laid in another grave." 

" Thy boon I grant," the king replied, 

And, in a troubled mood. 
From the garden wall to the palace hall, 

With stifling anger, strode. 

" Make haste, my sons ! " the old man said ; 

" Into the wild wood hie. 
And fetch a gaunt she- wolf ' with want, 

That your father may not die ! " 



PALENQUE. 297 

Within the wood the seven sons 

In stealth and silence sought, 
Until a gaunt she-wolf with want 

Was to their father brought. 

Within the garden walls, the beast. 

With hunger fierce and keen, 
Was cast, perchance, with its sharpened sense, 

To scent what couldn't be seen ! 



" Come, now, king," the old man said ; 

" And where the famished beast 
Digs in the ground, there will be found 

The baby laid at rest." 

Now here, now there, about the yard, 

The eager she-wolf ran, 
Until she found a scent in the ground, 

And to dig at once began. 



" Quick ! kill the beast ! " the old man cried ; 

" Before she eats the corse ! " 
But ere the dart could pierce her heart, 

The wolf had torn perforce — 

From out the ground a feathered bird, 

Of green and yellow and red, 
A ribbon about its resplendent throat, 

The princess's parrot, dead ! 

The old man fell upon his knees ; 

" My life, king, is thine ; 
It was for her bird, the weeping I heard ; 

I did the princess malign." 



298 PALENQUE. 

And before the sun sank in the sea, 
The old man's heartless breast, 

Filled the gaping jaw and the hungering maw 
Of the gaunt and gurly beast. 

" So be it ever with him that speaks 

A falsehood to the king ! 
Resound the trumpet and the drum, 

And let the welkin ring ! " 



Ah, me ! the weary hours the king 

Sate in his palace of stone ; 
A million among, the thought of the throng, 

And yet in his heart alone ! ^ 

The only wight that approached at will, 

Without a regal command, 
An old, old slave on the brink of the grave, 

With a broom in his trembling hand. 

" Come hither, slave ! " the monarch said, 

" And tell me truly why 
Thou comest alone unto the throne 

And fearest not to die ? " 

" It is because," the old slave said, 

" My duty never goes 
Any nearer thy thought than the sole of thy foot, 

Or nearer thy heart than thy toes." 

"Is is said and well," the king replied ; 

" But happily now, it appears, 
That head and feet together must meet — 

The king and his slave as peers. 



PALENQUE. 299 

" Come, sit thee down upon this couch,^ 

And talk as a brother with me ; 
And what I may that thou canst say, 

That will I do for thee." 

The old slave sate beside the king, 

And spake with freedom and ease, 

Of shadows that crept on the floor as he swept, 
And of dust that made persons sneeze. 

*' And nothing more," the old slave said ; 

" Than only this, will I say. 
That, if thou would'st prove thy daughter's love 

I might suggest the way. 

" Condemn the sculptor to be slain 

Within the princess's sight ; 
And as her heart will play its part, 

So let thy mercy or might. 

" And what thou mayest that I can say — 

I trust, I do not presume ; 
I pray thee, my lord, be as good as thy word, 

And buy me a new broom ! " 



The guards and executioners 

Were summoned to the king ; 

And as his word was spoken and heard, 
Arranged was everything. 

The day arrived ; on the palace porch. 
The king and princess sate, 

The bloody mound in sight and sound 
Of the eye and tongue of state. 



300 PALENQUE. 

Oh, pale, pale was the jDrincess's face. 

And ashen were her lips ; 
While her eyes were bright with a muffled might 

That moved at her finger-tips. 



But never a sigh escaped her breast, 

Her beating heart to check. 
Till the collar of stone was taken down 

And hung on the victim's neck. ~ 

When hark ! as the flash of the uplifted blade 

Gleamed in the staring eye, 
What a rousing cheer divides the ear 

With a baby's piercing cry ? 

And lo ! three thousand men of might, 
With swords and arrows drawn, 

Appeared before the palace door, 
A menace to the throne ! 



And in their midst, in a woman's arms, 

A baby richly dressed, 
A brilliant red plume on its head, 

And gold upon its breast ! 



Before the king the princess fell ; 

" My father, lord of lords, 
Withhold thine hand and thy command, 

And listen to my words. 



" I am thy child, borne by thy queen, 

A princess by birth-right ; 
But, as a slave, king, would 'st thou have 

Me ever in thy sight ! 



PALENQUE. 301 

" Within thy palace walls confined, 

A trembling, troubled thrall, 
Beneath the hand of thy command. 

In blood, on every wall ! ^° 

" Till, of all the evil things of earth, 
I shunned thee, growth-inwrought, 

A thing apart from thee, my heart, 

And a dream undreamed, my thought ! 

" And when thou would'st repress my love, 

As truly told to thee, 
Thou taught'st me how to thee to do, 

As thou did'st unto me. 



" When, with the spy behind the screen. 

Thou taughtest me deceit. 
It was I, apt I, that made the bird fly 

By pinching hard its feet ! 

" And not its fear of the scratching chay, 

Familiar to its ear, 
As the warning word in the sound I heard, 

When I drew listlessly near ! 

" And when, king, beside my bed. 

Thou stolest in the night. 
It was I that shook the child till it woke. 

And cried out in affright — 

" A child that never before nor since. 

Within thy daughter's bed, 
Has mocked the charms of another's arms. 

Asleep in another's stead. 
2M 



302 PALENQUE. 

" And when, king, the gaunt she-wolf 
' Tore the parrot from the earth. 

It was I that made the mock parade 
Te conceal my baby's birth. 

" For why, my lord, the jealous bird 

Flew at the baby's eyes, 
And repeated the word of endearment heard, 

And mimicked the baby's cries." 

" And when a servant killed the bird, 
For its tell-tale tongue and spite, 

I wept indeed, as the old man said, 

And buried the bird in the night — 

" Cutting here the sod, to deceive the slaves 
That skulked in my path as spies. 

And laying it where the wolf might tear 
It out before thine eyes. 

" And now, king, lest thou might'st slay 

The sculptor in my sight. 
It did behoove me in my love 

To summon all my might. 

" Hear then, king, and mark each word ; 

These three things have I done, 
To guide thy hand and give command 

And secure the crown for my son. 

" First, I have bound thy body-guard. 
With their trust in a mother's love. 

More firmly to me than their fear of thee. 
At their mercy, can remove. 

," And in their midst, I have placed my child. 

That, whatsoever hap 
To him beneath the dagger of death, 

Their future king may escape. 



PALENQUE. 303 

" Next, I have found a culprit slave, 

For the ransom of his head, 
To risk his life beneath the knife. 

In my baby's father's stead — 

" Who, in the guise of thine old slave, 

That sweeps with a new broom. 
At thine elbow stands with a sword in his hands 

To determine, if need be, thy doom ! 

" While, third, my lord, I have closed the door 

Behind thy unguarded back. 
That thou may est give what I will receive, 

Or, otherwise, will take — 

" Thy crown, in trust for the sculptor's son, 

The issue of my womb. 
In exchange for what revealed thy plot. 

The reward of thy slave, this broom ! " 

The king uprose in a murderous mood, 
And hurled to the ground his crown ; 

Then, stamping his plume, he seized the broom, 
And sank into a swown. 

The princess tore from the sculptor his mask, 

While the welkin loud did ring, 
And placed upon his head the crown. 

And pronounced him her husband and King ! 

And hark ! what word is that that cuts 
Like a knife through the startled air ? 

A word of command to stay a hand, 
And the culprit's life to spare ! 

And that faint cry afar in the throng 

That rises above the din ? 
The fleetest run and fetch the son 

That has made his mother the Queen ! 



304 PALENQUE, 

With the prince upon her bosom laid, 

Before the surging crowd, 
The queen, endeared to all, appeared. 

And spake to them aloud. 

" So be it ever with woman and man. 

When they all risks will run. 
Their faithful love in each other to ppove. 

And save or daughter or son ! 

" So be it ever that plot will meet 

Its counterplot in turn. 
That the strong from the weak and the harsh from 
the meek. 

The rule of right may learn ! 

" So be it ever as it has been 

Unto the slave and king ! 
Resound the trumpet and the drum. 

And let the welkin ring ! " 



^ Palenque ! Yes ; it is a word of Spanish origin and signi- 
fies a stockade, an enclosure of palisades, or, if you will, a cor- 
ral. But what of that ? Does not our word Court, the palace 
of a king and all its appurtenances, persons, plate, politeness, 
pusillanimity, and power — does not our own word Court sig- 
nify, etymologically, a stockyard, or cattle-pen? 

^ '* In lie;f .... we have a positive which has lost, almost 
beyond recovery, its once very popular comparative degrees, 
and is itself fast growing obsolete. It has been so completely 
set aside that few are aware of its close relationship with the 
Anglo-Saxon verb leofan, our love, and its connection with the 
Old English leman, once liefman and lefman, the dear one, and 
as such continually used of both sexes." — Schele De Vere. 

^ " Don Miguel had a collection of chay or flint stones, cut 
in the shape of arrow-heads, which he thought, and Don 
Miguel was no fool, were the instruments employed (by the 



PALENQUE. 305 

sculptors of Copan. ) They were sufficiently hard to scratch 
into the stone. Perhaps by men accustomed to the use of 
them, the whole of these deep relief ornaments might have 
been scratched, but the chay stones themselves looked as if 
they had been cut by metal." — Stephens : Central America, 
ect., i. 154. 

* " The High Priest had in his Hand a large, broad, and; 
sharp Knife made of Flint. Another Priest carried a wooden 
collar wrought like a snake. The persons to be sacrificed were 
conducted one by one up the steps, stark naked, and as soon as 
laid on the Stone,, had the Collar put upoxi their Necks, and the 
four priests took hold of the hands and feet. Then the High 
Priest with wonderful Dexterity ripped up the Breast, tore out 
the Heart, reeking, with his Hands, and showed it to the Sun, 
offering him the Heart and Stream that canie fropa it. Then 
he turned to the Idol, and threw it in his face, which done, he 
kicked the body down the steps, and it never stopped till it 
came to the bottom, because they were very upright." — Cogol- 
LUDO, cited by Stephens : Travels in Yucatan, i. 317. 

As far as the knowledge of the writer goes, this is the only 
instance of the use of wooden collars ; whereas a number of 
stone collars have been brought from Cenetal America, the use 
of which — a puzzle to archaeologists^ — is presumed to have 
been that ascribed to them in the poem. 

'That it was possible to engrave by the light of the fire-fly 
( Elater noctilucus ) of Central, America, several of the beetles 
being fastened to a stick to make a torch, or confined in a cage 
to constitute a lantern, see Cowan's Curious History of Insects, 
pp. 51-4. Curiously, too, by the light of a single beetlej in the 
Palace of Palenque, were the scene of the poem is laid, Ste- 
phens reports that he was able to "read distinctly the finely- 
printed pages of an American newspaper." — Central America, 
ect., ii. p. 302. 

® " The principal doorway (of the Palace of Palenque,) is 
not distinguished by its size or by any superior ornament, but 
is indicated only by a range of broad stone steps leading up to 
it on the terrace. The doorways have no doors, nor are there 
the remains of aily. Within, on each side, are three niches in 
the wall, about eight or ten inches square, with a cylindrical ; 
stone about two inches in diameter, fixed upright, by which 
perhaps a door was secured. Along the cornice outside, pro- 
jecting about a foot beyond the front, holes were drilled 
at intervals through the stone ; and our impression was, that 
an immense cotton cloth, ruiining the whole length of the 
building, perhaps painted in a style corresponding : with the 



306 PALENQUE. 

ornaments, was attached to this cornice, and raised and lower- 
ed like a curtain, according to the exigencies of sun and rain . 
Such a curtain is used now in front of the piazzas of some 
haciendas in Yucatan." — Ibid. ii. 312. On the doors at Uxmal 
that opened and shut, see Stephens : Travels in Yucatan, i. 324. 

'She-wolf: a clumsy combination to express sex, of ancient 
and honorable usage, but now no longer employed by careful 
writers. Fuller has she-^aint and .s/).^-devil ; Shakespeare, she- 
Mercury ; Addison, s/if-knight-errant and s/jf-Machiavel ; and 
Byron, ,s/je-parade and s^e-condition. 

* In writing these lines the presence of Andrew Johnson, 
the President of the United States, was ever before me, as I 
have described him in an article entitled Keminiscences of his 
Private Life and Character, published in the Pittsburgh Leader, 
Sunday, 22 August, 1875, the concluding paragraph of which I 
reproduce here : 

" In conclusion, I may say that during the last years of his 
presidential term of office, Mr. Johnson, on account of his 
physical suffering, his domestic cares and anxieties, and his 
hard, inflexible, and persistent manner of thinking, reasoning, 
and talking, of working, of doing everything, was lonely in the 
centre of forty millions of people, and unhappy even to mis- 
erable, on that pinnacle of power, of one of the mightiest 
nations of the globe, to which the eyes of myriads are turned 
as to the greatest happiness on earth ! He was too great to be 
companionable, and his own philosophy teaches that he paid 
the penalty of his greatness in loneliness and misery." 

' For lack of a better word, let " couch " pass for the seat 
which is represented among the sculptures at Palenque and 
elsewhere. The principal figure, supposed to be a queen or 
princess, repi-esented in the elliptical tablet at Palenque, sits 
cross-legged on a couch the arms or sides of which are orna- 
mented each with a panther's head. The leg and foot of an- 
other couch, with panther's head and feet, in stucco at Palen- 
que, are said by Stephens to be " elegant specimens of art and 
models of study." 

1" Concerning the Red Hand, depicted, on the walls of the 
palaces and temples of Central America, as if an open hand 
smeared with paint had been pressed against the plaster or 
stone, see Stephens : Travels in Yucatan, ii. 46. The Indians 
say it represents the hand of the master of the building, which, 
I presume, signifies, a mark of individual ownership or 
authority, analogous to the indenture of the olden time in Eng- 
land, and the signature to-day. 



FREYDISA. 307 

"The writer has known a Mexican parrot to exhibit its 
jealousy in the manner detailed in the poem, biting children 
caressed in its presence, and then imitating their cries of 
pain and fear. 



FREYDISA. 



After Biarne had coasted along the shores of America, ( in 
986, ) and Leif had effected a settlement in Vinland, ( in 1000, ) 
and Thorwald had sailed to more southern regions of the new 
found land, (in 1002, ) and Thorstein had made his unsuccess- 
ful attempt to bring back the body of his brother from its rest- 
ing-place at Crossness, ( in 1005, ) and Thorfinn Karlsefne, 
commanding one ship, and Biarne Grimolfson and Thorhall 
Gamlason commanding a second, and Thorvard, intermarried 
with Freydisa, the natural daughter of Eric the Red, com- 
manding the third, had returned from their memorable expe- 
dition, (in 1007-11,) — after these events had taken place, in 
the year 1012, Freydisa, the aforesaid, the half-sister of the 
brothers Leif, Thorwald, and Thorstein, prevailed on two Nor- 
wegian brothers, Helge and Finboge, to make another expedi- 
tion to Vinland, in partnership or as a joint venture: (the 
gray mare being the better horse, evidently, ) she and her hus- 
band, Thorvard, fitting out one ship, and the brothers another ; 
the number of men being limited to thirty each, and the num- 
ber of women left indefinite. Freydisa, however, contrived to 
secrete in h.er vessel five more men than her complement. 
And so they set sail from Greenland. And no sooner had they 
landed than they began to quarrel, Freydisa compelling the 
brothers to build new boothes for themselves, and leave to her 
those which Leif had built twelve years before; and so they 
continued in strife, until^ before the winter was over, Freydisa 
incited her husband and men to murder the rival crew. , This 
was done in the most atrocious manner. While asleep, the 
victims were surprised and bound as prisoners ; and while they 
were led one by one from the booth, Freydisa found a willing 
hand to slaughter the men, but neither her husband nor one of 
her crew would kill the women, five in number, who belonged 
to the Norwegian vessel : for reasons which served only to ex- 
asperate Freydisa the more. Whereupon, she seized an axe 
and butchered them herself. 



308 FBEYDISA. 

This is the first .tragedy of America of which there is an 
authentic account. It is related in the Codex Flateyensis, a 
memorable MS. of the fourteenth century — a history which 
Rafn has reproduced in part, with Danish and Latin transla- 
tions, in his quarto, published in 1837, to which the curious 
reader is referred for sufficient evidence to warrant the follow- 
ing idealization and elaboration of the character of our horri- 
ble heroine of the North. 

There is one characteristic of the Freyijisa of the poem, 
however, of which there is no hint in history beyond the fact 
that her father, old Eric the Red, whom she 'seemed to repeat 
in the guise of a woman, was very reluctant to exchange his 
old religion and familiar, namely, the worship of the gods 
which had been evolved from the terrible objective conflicts of 
Frost and Fire in the north of Europe, for the new and 
strange, namely, the worship of the Christ Crucified which had 
been developed from the equally terrible but subjective con- 
flicts of passion and penitence in central Asia : a fact which 
fancy has seized to make Freydisa, accordingly, the last of her 
race to represent the religion of the North in opposition to 
the religion of the South which was introduced into Greenland 
but a few years before her departure for Vinland : the circum- 
stance of her sex, moreover, being of significant avail in the 
antithesis. 

While, for the doom of Freydisa, this only is recorded : 
that after the confession of three of her crew, who had been 
put on the rack, by Leif, he said, " I cannot be induced to turn 
against my sister ; but this I will divine, that her issue will 
never have the prosperity of their peers." " And so it came to 
pass," the saga-smith has added, "that from that time they 
were held in detestation." 



Oh, for a sip of Kvasir's' blood, 

With a draught from Mimer's ^ well, 

Or the tuneful tongue with which Bragi ^ sung, 
My terrible tale to tell ! 

But the blood is spilt and the well is dry. 

And wishing no help affords ; 
From the Ragnarok* of the past to invoke, 

Now nothing remains but words. 



FREYDISA. 309 

But words, vague sounds with a vaguer sense, 

Instinct with thought no more 
Than the shapes of bones in shattered stones 

Are the beasts and birds of yore. 



Freydisa stands on the sandy shore 

Of Vinland's new-found coast, 
And with many a curse in nautical Norse 

Begins her blasphemous boast. 

"It is time that Christ has come upon earth, 

Proclaiming Peace and Love, 
Life's strength to the weak, death's delights to the 
meek, 

The eagle's prize to the dove ! 

" For of all the men and women of old 

To rejoice when the deed is done, 
And to ride on the blast that has wrecked the past, 

There now remains but one ! 

" But one upon earth to murder for mirth. 

As well as for lust and gain ; 
To bathe in the flood of the hot gushing blood. 

And rejoice in the ruddy stain ! 

" But one to slaughter from dawn to dusk, 

And from dusk to dawn carouse ; 
With blood to fill full a foeman's skull. 

And drink Valhalla's ^ joys ! 

" But one, the daughter of Eric the Red, 

On this strange island cast. 
With a Christian groom to determine her doom, 

Of the viking race, the last ! 

2N 



310 FBEYDISA. 

" Unless in a storm the red-bearded Thor ® 

As a worthy wooer will come, 
And, while thunders crash, with a lightning flash 

Illumine with life her womb ! " 



The while, in the gleam of the midday sun, 

Freydisa gloats in glee 
O'er a sight — since unseen in Vinland, I ween. 

For which, Christ glorified be ! 

Full five and thirty shallow graves 

Upon a bloody strand. 
With, uncovered there, a mass of hair. 

And here a foot or hand. 



And here, upon a woman's face. 

An eyeball staring wild, 
And there agape a mangled shape — 

A belly big with child ! 

While beast and bird and slimy slug. 

Left by the ebbing tide. 
Together feed with ravenous greed 

On the corpses side by side. 

" Come, come, ye little wolves and weak, 
Come, gorge your gullets in haste. 

Lest ye may see there remains with me 
A wolf-whelp of the past — 

" A Garm ' to gulp ye down in a trice, 
While his howl is still in your ears ; 

Or a Fenrir * to feed with insatiate greed 
Till this island itself disappears ! 



FREYDISA. 311 

" Come, come, ye puny crows and vile, 
Come, gorge your gullets in haste, 

Lest ye may see there remains with me 
A raven of the past — 

" One of the twain that over the world 

Take their diurnal flight. 
That Odin's^ ear all things may hear, 

When they rest on his shoulders at night — 

" A Hugin to swoop, in his hurried flight, 

And clutch ye in his claw ; 
Or a Mugin ^** to break ye in his beak 

And mince ye in his maw ! 

" Come, come, ye shriveled shrimps and prawns, 

Come, gorge your gullets in haste, 
Lest ye may see there remains with me 

A Kraken of the past — 

" Lest ye may see this island sink, 

And above it the Maelstrom come, 

With its widening whorl and seething swirl, 
To wash ye into foam ! 



" Come, come, ye degenerate things of earth, 

Ye fit companions of Man, 
Who kneels and prays, in these latter days, 

Afeared to do what he can ! 



" While of all the men and women of old, 
To bury the dead with more dead, 

There remains but one, a woman alone, 
The daughter of Eric the Red! " 



Si2 FREYDISA. 

The while bold Thorvard and his creW 
Sit in Leif s boothes near by, 

At their noonday board with food well stored 
From the murdered Norwegi9,ns' supply. 



When behold ! Freydisa, the Bloody, appears ! 

Advancing from the strand. 
An axe upon her shoulders of brawn, 

A woman's head in her hand ! 



Upon the board she lays the head — 

" Here is the face so fair, 
The promised meed to ye all for the deed 

Now, let each take his share ! 



" What ! will ye flee from Beauty's self 

In horror and affright? 
Ye, caitiffs base, of a pitiful race, 

Go, get ye from my sight ! " 



Freydisa stands, in the light of the moon, 
On a rock of Vinland's coast. 

And with many a curse in nautical Norse, 
Resumes her blasphemous boast. 



The rising tide in billows rolls. 
Till, sweeping o'er the strand 

The surging waves lay open the graves 
And lift the dead from the sand — 



FREYDISA. 313 

And lift the mangled dead from the sand, 
And toss them about in their might, 

The lightest of toys and the brightest of joys 
Within Freydisa's sight. 

The wind howls with increasing din ; 

The clouds close fast and thick ; 
The lightnings crack the black lid of rack ; 

The thunder follows quick. 

A jutting crag, of ragged rock, 

High -hanging overhead, 
With a deafiening crash and o'erwhelming splash, 

Falls among the floating dead ! 

The very earth sways to and fro, 

The sea goes up and down ; 
Still, unmoved by the shock, on the quivering 
rock, 

Freydisa stands alone ! 

" Hurrah ! hurrah ! for the giants of old, 

In whose majestic mirth, 
There is one to rejoice with a human voice. 

The last of her race upon earth I 

" But higher still, rise higher, ye waves — 

Into the sight of Thor, 
These dead uphold their tale to unfold 

Of Frevdisa's valor in war ! 



" Yea, higher still, as if enraged 
The Midgard Serpent shook — 

As if again he felt the pain 

Of the Redbeard's barbed hook ! " 



314 FREYDISA. 

" And louder still, roar louder, ye winds — 

Lift up Freydisa's voice 
Above the cloud to resound aloud 

And make the ^sir^^ rejoice! 

" Yea, louder still, ye roaring winds — 

As if Hrsesvelgur ^^ spread 
His wings to sweep across the deep 

And strengthened ye as ye sped ! 

" And nearer still, ye lightnings strike, 

That ye may be caressed, 
Till I feel the fire of a worthy sire 

In the blood that burns in my breast! 



" Yea, nearer still, ye lightnings of Thor ! 

Come, make my bosom your bed. 
That I live not the last of a race of the past. 

The daughter of Eric the Red ! " 



The while bold Thorvard and his crew 

Cower in the boothes in fear; 
As if Ragnarok were in every stroke 

Of the lightning so threatening and near. 

Until lo ! Freydisa, returning, appears, 
Revealed, in the dazzling light, 

A giant in stature, in form, and feature, 
In their bewildered sight ! 

When, with a common terror seized, 

They flee into the storm. 
Perchance behind a rock to find 

A screen to the fearful form ! 



FREYDISA. 315 

" What ! will ye flee from a woman's charms — 

A bosom bared at midnight ? 
Ye, caitiffs base, of a pitiful race, 

Go, get ye from my sight ! " 



For Greenland, ho ! the sail is set. 

And what though the sea be rough, 

Freydisa stands with the helm in her hands 
And bids the boat be off! 

Away the ship Skidbladnir " speeds 

Before the bellying blast, 
Till, in the foam of her northern home, 

At anchor she lies fast. 

When, amid the greetings and merry meetings, 

A score of voices cry, 
"■ But where are they of Noroway ? " 

We cannot their sail descry ? " 

Then up and speaks Freydisa forthwith, 

And answers one and all, 
" Wrecked off the coast of Vinland and lost. 

And now in Hela's ^^ hall." 

" But where got ye these well-known arms, 
And the jewels your neck bedeck? " 

" We stripped the dead, in the white sand laid, 
Recovered from the wreck." 

" But why this bloody, bloody axe, 

And this mat of a woman's hair ? " 

" I severed a vein to ease my pain, 
And cast my combings there." 



SIQ FREYDISA. 

But many shake their heads in doubt, 

And gather in groups afar, 
Where the muttered word cannot be heard 

By the terrible woman of war. 

And when Freydisa sleeps, behold. 

Ten daring men and true. 
Creep along the sands, and, with smothering hands, 

Bear away three of her crew. 

And afar hence in a secret place, 

They break them on the wheel, 
Till, with gasping breath in the fear of death, 

Freydisa's deeds they reveal. 

" Ye lie ! ye lie ! ye cowards accursed ! " 

A voice cries in the night ; 
And with the word Freydisa's sword 

Gleams in the flickering light ! 

Surprised and aghast, the torturing ten 

Into the darkness fiee ; 
The light is quenched — and Freydisa's sword 
drenched 

In the blood of the tortured three ! 

" And ye, Freydisa and her crew 

To her enemies would betray ? 
Ye cowards accursed, of my foemen the worst. 

Get ye to Hela, away ! " 



The days and weeks and months and years 

Speed in their ceaseless flight, 
Till Freydisa stands with a staff in her hands, 

And in rags and tatters bedight. 



FREYDISA. 317 

When a little old hag, not as high as her hip, 

Before Freydisa appears, 
And mocks the alarms in her trembling arms 

And the tortures in her tears. 

Freydisa grapples with the hag 

To hurl her in the hall, 
But falls herself before the elf, 

And breaks her staff in her fall. 

And behold ! as she rises in her wrath 

And gasps for breath and fast, 
She bends on the half of her broken staff 

At herself in horror at last ! 

Her face scored with the hag's long nails ; 

The hairs of her head torn out ; 
Her every brawn and thew and bone 

An ache from head to foot. 

Albeit, she grapples the hag again, 

To fall, as she fell before ; 
But on all fours to rise, with sightless eyes, 

And her teeth scattered on the floor. 

When, lifting a feeble, faltering hand, 

To grope for the hag in her rage, 
She falls, nevermore to rise from the floor 

To wrestle in vain with Old Age ! 

To wrestle in vain with Elli, ^^ like Thor, 

In the olden, olden time. 
When the gods, begot in the saga-smith's thought, 

Wrought wonders in runic rime. 
20 



318 FREYDlSA. 

Freydisa writhes in her wretched plight, 

Deaf in the thunder's din, 
And blind in the gleam of the summer sun's 
beam, 

But not in the dream of Sin ! 

She sees, in Nastrond's " venom vat 

Afloat a horrible head, 
With the face of the last of her race of the past. 

The daughter of Eric the Red ! 

While, from a wicker-woven roof 

Of serpents of monstrous size. 
The venom drips from lurid lips 

Into the upturned eyes ! 

And three long fingers point at the face. 

As if, from out the gloom. 
The Sisters ^® of old in silence foretold 

Freydisa's eternal doom ! 

But still she mutters the curse of her youth, 
Till her lips and tongue are dumb — 

Till, with latest breath, she mumbles to Death, 
" It is time that Christ has come ! " 

The while, nor man, nor woman, nor child 

To succor or soothe comes near ; 
But keeps aloof from the outcast's roof. 

In shuddering horror and fear. 



Until, upon a heap of bones. 

The rotting rafters fall. 
And the mould of years in turn appears, 

A cover to one and all — 



FBBYPI^A.. 319 

To one and all of the women and men 

Of the olden, olden time, 
When the gods, begot in the saga-smith's thought. 

Wrought wonders in runic rime. 



Leaving nothing behind in fancy to find 
But an echo that never is dumb. 

Repeating the last of the words of the past, 
" It is time that Christ has come ! " 



' Why poetry is called in Scandinavian lore, Kviisir's 
blood, Suttung's mead, the dwarfs ransom, Odin's booty, 
Odin's gift, the beverage of the gods, ect., is told in the second 
part of the Prose Edda, commonly called the Conversations of 
Bragi. 

^ " But under the root [ of the ash Yggdrasill ] that stretch- 
es out towards the Frost-giants there is Mimir's well, in which 
wisdom and wit lie hidden. The owner of this well is called 
Mimir, [ Memory, Mind. ] He is full of wisdom, because he 
drinks the waters of the well from the horn Gjoll every morn- 
ing. One day All-father came and begged a draught of this 
water, which he obtained, but was obliged to leave one of 
his eyes as a pledge for it." — The Prose Edda. 

^ " ' There is another god,' continued Har, ' named Bragi, 
who is celebrated for his wisdom, and more especially for his 
eloquence and correct forms of speech. He is not only emi- 
nently skilled in poetry, but the art itself is called from his 
name Bragr, which epithet is also applied to denote a distin- 
guished poet or poetess.' " — The Prose Edda. See poem on 
Valhalla, ante p. 87. 

* Eagnardk : literally, the gods beracked, or beclouded ; 
hence, the end of the world, the destruction of the universe. 

^See poem on Valhalla, or the Hall of the Chosen, ante 
p. 85. 

® See poem on Norway, ante p. 39. 

■^In the Grimnis-mal, st. 43, Garm is styled the first of 
hounds, as Bragi is of bards, the Yggdrasill of trees, Odin of 



320 FEEYDISA. 

the ^sir, etc.; and in the Eddaic account of Eagnarok, he is 
described as a fearful monster. " That day the dog Garm, who 
had been chained in the Gnipa cave, breaks loose.' He is the 
most fearful monster of all, and attacks Tyr, and they kill each 
other." 

^ See poem on Norway, ante p. .88. 

^ Etymological] y considered, Odin, Wodin, or God, is the 
Sense of Sight idealized, personified, and deified. It is synon- 
ymous with the Seeing One or the Wise. See poem on Val- 
halla, ante p. 85. 

^° Hugin and Munin are Spirit and Mind mythologized — 
the former being confounded with or compounding Thought, 
Reason, and the like ; and the latter, Memory. And wherefore 
symbollized in the form of ravens, see poem on Valhalla, ante 
p. 86. 

'^How Thor went to fish for the Midgard Serpent is told 
in The Pro^e Edda. This mythological reptile is not only a 
reminder of the Asiatic origin of the Scandinavians, but an 
involution of the great cuttle-fish of the Norwegian seas : its 
long serpent-like tentacles converting the real serpent of the 
land into an ideal monster of the ocean — the horizon symbol- 
lized. See poem on Norway, ant£ p. 36. 

^^ Etymologically, ^sir means the beings ; mythologically, 
the Gods of the Scandinavian Creed. Cf. our word is. 

^* See poem on Norway, ante p. 37. 

" Hreesvelgur's the giant, 

Who on heaven's edge sits 

In the guise of an eagle ; 

And the winds, it is said, 

Rush down on the earth 

Prom his outspreading pinions." — 

VafthrHdnis-mM, st. 37. 

'* So called after the mythological ship of the Scandinavi- 
ans. 

" ' What hast thou to say,' demanded Gangler, ' of Skid- 
bladnir, which thou toldst me was the best of ships ? Is there 
no other ship as good or as large? ' 

" ' Skidbladnir,' replied Har, ' is without doubt the best 
and most artfully constructed of any, but the ship Naglfar is of 
larger size. They were dwarfs, the sons of Ivaldi, who built 
Skidbladnir, and made a present of her to Frej\ She is so 
large that all the ^sir with their weapons and war stores find 
room on board her. As soon as the sails are set a favorable 



FREYDISA, 321 

breeze arises and carries her to her place of destination ; and 
she is made of so many pieces, and with so much skill, that 
when she is not wanted for a voyage Frey may fold her to- 
gether like a piece of cloth, and put her in his pocket." — Prose 
Edda. 

'^Hela, etymologically the same as English Chill, Latin 
Gelu; mythologically, a personification of the chill and rigid- 
ness of death, the Goddess of the Frigid Regions of Death ; 
and strangely now — the whirligig of time ever making the 
globe and all which it inherit a world of widdershins — our 
Hell, where, according to popular notions, the souls of the 
wicked are punished by fire. 

i^How Thor wrestled with Elli, (a personification of Old 
Age, ) is told in the narrative of his adventures while on his 
journey to the Land of the Giants, in The Prose Edda. 

" " In Nastrond there is a vast and direful structure with 
doors that face the north. It is formed entirely of the backs 
of serpents, wattled together like wicker-work. But the ser- 
pents ' heads are turned towards the inside of the hall, and 
continually vomit forth floods of venom, in which wade all 
those who commit murder, or who forswear themselves, [or 
commit adultery. ] As it is said in the Voluspii, st. 34, 35 — 

' She saw a hall 

Far from the sun 

In NAstrond standing. 

Northward the doors look, 

And venom-drops 

Fall in through loopholes. 

Formed is that hall 

Of wreathed serpents. 

' There saw she wade, 

Though heavy streams, 

Men forsworn 

And murderers, 

And those who others' wives 

Essayed to blandish.' " — The Prose Edda. 

1^ The Weird Sisters. " Near the fountain which is under 
the ash, [ Yggdrasill, ] stands a very beauteous dwelling, out of 
which go three maidens, named Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, 
[ i. e., the Present, Past, and Future. ] These maidens fix the 
lifetime of all men, and are called Norns. But there are, in- 
deed, many other Norns ; for, when a man is born, there is a 
Norn to determine his fate." — 7 he Prose Edda. 



322 THE WITCH TRAGEDY OF SALEM. 



THE WITCH TRAGEDY OF SALEM. 



To the physiologist, the popular delusion with respect to 
witches which culminated at iSalem, Massachusetts, on the 
22nd day of September, in the year 1692, presents the most 
striking and instructive example in the annals of America of 
the subversion of human nature that results whenever the sub- 
jective idea — the "thought" of the following poem — becomes 
more potent than the objective reality — the "thing" — in 
moving mankind to attain their ends. At the place and time 
mentioned, eight persons, who had been condemned as 
witches, (albeit, of both sexes, and "persons of knowledge, 
holiness, and devotion," as admitted by the Reverend Mr. 
Parkis, the most distinguished of the deluded divines M'ho 
played a part in the tragedy, } were executed on the gallows ; 
after perhaps a score or more had been hung, or pressed to 
death beneath weights, during the development of the delusion 
in the Puritan settlements of New England : for the details of 
which the reader is referred to the Records of Salem Witc-hcraft, 
copied from original documents, and printed for W. Elliot 
Woodward, at Roxbury, Mass., in 1864, and the two volumes 
of Charles W. TJpham, a monograph on the subject, published 
in Boston, in 1867 ; before the publication of which works, it 
seems the subject was regarded generally rather as a jest than 
a matter of serious contemplation for the historian and phi- 
losopher, and the most improbable event in the memory of 
man to inspire the pen of a poet. 



Whirling in and out, the v^^orld without 

Becomes the world within ; 
The thousand things a poet sings 

Another course begin 
In the brain of man, as whims and dreams 

Of sanctity and sin. 



THE WITCH TRAGEDY OF SALEM. 323 

Thus, all the things that lengthen Life, 

In every form of food, 
Of earth and air, of water and fire, 

Become so many thoughts of good, 
That gather upon a good king's throne 

And evolve into a God. 



While all the things that shorten Life, 
From the whirlwind and the weevil. 

To the tortures accursed of hunger and thirst, 
Become so many thoughts of evil. 

That jump to ape the worst man's shape 
And develope into a Devil. 



Until, side by side, within the brain, 

At constant jog and jar, 
These shadows engage in youth and age 

In everlasting war ; 
For so without the human thought 

In conflict all things are. 



Until, turning inside out the man — 
The slave of the shadows within — 

Divides the world around him whirled 
Into halves that never have been : 

A heaven above of goodness and love, 
And a hell below of sin. 



And all mankind this slave as well 
Divides into bad and good ; 

His self-esteem ever ranging him. 
With a most complacent nod, 

Albeit imbrued with a victim's blood. 
The first in the service of God. 



324 THE WITCH TRAGEDY OF SALEM. 

And all that doubt and differ with him, 
He damns as the Devil's own, 

Albeit flesh of his fruitful flesh 
And bone of his bodily bone ; 

His might making right to kill at will 
His sister, sire, or son. 



Until, behold ! the City of Peace' 

The City of War become! 
The virtue and worth, the music and mirth 

Of the goodman's happy home 
Converted to ill-will and woe, 

The dungeon and the tomb ! 



Until Murder, in mask, in the pulpit stands. 

The vicar of God, to tell 
Of the secret marks that stand for the sparks 

Of the burning brands of hell,^ 
And of the reward in heaven prepared 

For him that to quench will quell ! • 



Until Guilt, in disguise, sits on the bench ,^ 
And Innocence pleads in vain, 

While Malice and Spite, Revenge and Hate, 
Ill-will and Greed of Gain 

The jury compose in human clothes 
To do the deed of Cain ! 



Until, behold ! upon the hill, 

Against the midnight sky, 
Eight gibbets swing in the storm, and sing, 

And dance as the blast sweeps by — 
Was ever God so debased to the sod, 

And the Devil exalted so high ! 



THE WITCH TRAGEDY OF SALEM. 325 

Eight gibbets, swing and eight gibbets dance ! 

Albeit burdened each 
With a victim of Vice, condemned in a trice, 

And hung without halt or hitch — 
Incorporate evil in league with the Devil, 

A shadow of shadows, a Witch ! 



Not a thing that exists in the world without 

The human skull and brain ; 
But a monster begot in the womb of thought 

And born again and again, 
Until the fact confronts an act 

And proves it abortive and vain. 



Until, behold ! in the pulpit, now. 

In sackcloth and ashes cast. 
Repentant Remorse bending over a corse. 

From the gibbet agape and aghast, 
And with many a moan and gruesome groan. 

In vain recalling the Past ! * 



While, in ermined state and with wisdom's wig. 
Sits Reversal in Judgment, distraught. 

In vain with wereguild to compound for the 
killed, 
And untie the gallows'-knot 

By annulling the law unable to draw 

The line between Thing and Thought ! ® 



Until, behold ! the City of War 

The City of Peace, forsooth ; 
The Thing and the Thought together brought 

Into the relation of Truth ; 
2P 



326 THE WITCH TRAGEDY OF SALEM. 

And the Witches of Old, a tale to be told 
By Age in teaching Youth.® 



^ The signification of the word Salem. 

'^When, on the fearful 22nd of September, the Reverend 
Mr. Noyes, the worthy coadjutor of Mr. Parris and Cotton 
Mather, stood looking at the execution, he exclaimed that it 
was a sad sight to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there ! 

^ When the delusion had abated and the prisoners were 
discharged by proclamation by Sir William Phipps, Chief 
Justice Stoughton retired from the courts in obstinate rage at 
his conflicts with Satan having been cut short. 

* The Reverend Mr. Parris said, " I do humbly own this 
day, before the Lord and his people, that God has been Right- 
eously spitting in my face ; and I desire to lie low under all 
this reproach," etc. 

^ Judge Sewall, in full assembly, made a penitential ac- 
knowledgment of his error. The excommunications of Rebec- 
ca Nurse and Giles Corey were canceled. While in 1711, the 
authorities of the Province, with the sanction of the Council of 
Queen Anne, made a grant to the representatives of Rebecca 
Nurse of £ 25 ; to those of Mrs. Easty, £ 20, etc. 

® " This Salem story is indeed shocking in every view — to 
our pride as rational beings, to our faith as Christians, to our 
complacency as children of the Reformation. It is so shock- 
ing that some of us may regret that the details have been re- 
vived with such an abundance of evidence. But this is no 
matter of regret, but rather of congratulation, if we have not 
outgrown the need of admonition from the past. • How does 
that consideration stand ? 

" At the end of nearly three centuries we find ourselves 
relieved of a heavy burden of fear and care about the per- 
petual and unbounded malice of Satan and his agents. Witch- 
craft has ceased to be one of the gravest curses of the human 
lot. We have parted with one after another of the fetish or 
conjectural persuasions about our relations with the world of 
spirit or mind, regarded as in direct opposition to the world of 
matter. By a succession of discoveries we have been led to an 
essentially different view of life and thought from any dream- 
ed of before the new birth of science ; and at this day, and in 
our own metropolis [ London, ] we have Sir Henry Holland 



THE WITCH TKAGEDY OF SALEM. 327 

tylling us how certain treatment of this or that department of 
the nervous system will generate this or that state of belief 
and experience, as well as sensation. We have Dr. Carpenter 
disclosing facts of incalculable significance about brain-action 
without consciousness, and other vital mysteries. We have 
Dr. Maudsley showing, in the cells of the lunatic asylum, not 
only the very realm of Satan, as our fathers would have 
thought, but the discovery that it is not Satan after all, that 
makes the havoc, but our own ignorance which has seduced us 
into a blasphemous superstition, instead of inciting us to the 
study of ourselves." — Edinburgh Review, July, 1868, p. 24, 

Curiously, too, in the able review of Mr. Upham's work, 
here cited, the writer makes no allusion to the fact that, during 
the seventeenth century, for every person executed as a witch 
in America, a thousand were executed in England alone for 
this imaginary crime : Mr. Mackey, in his Memoirs of Extraor- 
dinary Popular Delusions, estimating the number of those sacri- 
ficed in the course of the century specified in England at forty 
thousand ! 



END OF THE POEMS LIKE FERN-LEAVES FOUND IN SHALE. 



SAGE, RUE, AND THYME. 



The old sawh Sage and Rue, 
That, in my garden grew. 
With ^^ pun-provoking ^'' Thyme, 
On the rocky Ridge of Rhyme. 



SAGE, RUE, AND THYME. 



— 1864 — 
THE LEGEND OF THE WEEPING WILLOW 



The maple leaves were weaving shrouds 

Of colors bright and gay, 
From Autumn's gold and purple clouds 

That deck the dying day. 



When down the way a lady fair 
Rode merrily with me ; 

While loosely hung her auburn hair 
From ribband fetters free. 



Near Fanny's Wood, then, as we rode, 
The lady, pointing, said, 

" See yonder willow ^ by the wood 
That, weeping, bows its head ! " 



332 THE LEGEND OF THE WEEPING-WILLOW. 

" Yes," answer'd I. Continued she, 
" A legend touching, true, 

Has made the same tree dear to me — 
Would like it told to you ? " 

" Yes ; thanks. A tale but told by you 

Was ever dear to me." 
She, sighing, told this Legend true 

Of the Weeping Willow-tree. 



When, two and fifty years ago, ( 1812 ) 

The fearful tocsin rung. 
War ! war ! against an English foe. 

To right our country's wrong ! 

A soldier, young and gallant, rode 

To bid a last adieu 
To one who dwelt within this wood, 

A maid, his sweetheart true. 

Down yonder hill, with slackened rein, 

His way he sadly led ; 
The horse partook his master's pain 

And lowly hung his head. 

A lithe and slender willow wand — 

The rider's only goad — 
Hung loosely in the soldier's hand 

As on he slowly rode. 

And as he passed this flowing spring, 
He startled at a sound, — 

He heard his loved one sweetly sing, — 
The switch fell to the ground. , 



THE LEGEND OP THE WEEPING-WILLOW. 333 

To yonder oak the horse was tied ; 

The rod, unthought-of, lay 
Till found by the intended bride, 

And waves this tree to-day.'' 



" Farewell. Within the coming year, 

If then the Briton's fled, 
I'll come again to thee, my dear, 

If not, believe me dead. 

" A soldier idly speaks of death. 
Then start not at the name ; 

With him 'tis but an empty breath, 
Another word for fame. 

" But if I live — a happy life, 

Return I then to lead. 
To live, to love, with thee, my wife — " 

Her thought of death was fled. 

For th' hope of love dreams not of death, 

Of happiness alone ; 
It twines not in its flowery wreath 

The weed of deadly tone. 

Her eyes, though tearful, quickly shone 
With inward love-warmth true : 

Like blue-bells turning to the sun 
When wet with morning's dew. 

" Then fare thee well. A woman's love 
Hopes, prays the same come true, 

Yes, nightly prays to Him above 
To keep from danger you. 
2Q 



334 THE LEGEND OF THE WEEPING-WILLOW. 

" A year, though long the time it seems, 
And much of sorrow brings, 

Yet, happy thoughts and happy dreams 
Will lend it swiftest wings. 

" And if, forsooth, you come not then ? 

See yonder ivy spread 
Its leaves so fresh and green, e'en when 

The oak it clings to's dead." 

" A noble vow," the soldier said, 
" Of faithful love out-spoken ; 

To keep my heart from fear and dread 
I need no other token. 

" ' Twill cheer me when the winter's blast 
Blows chilly through the camp, 

And warm the sod on which I'm cast 
Though deadly cold and damp. 

" The stormy wind its force has sped, 
The winter frost's no harm, 

The frozen ground's a downy bed, 
When all within is warm. 

" A farewell kiss of love ? — one more ? — 
Oh, had some Indian drug 

Prolonged that bliss forever more. 
No other Heaven I'd beg." 



Many years their flight had ta'en 
The Briton long had fled : 

Yet, came the soldier not again. 
For he was with the dead. 



THE LEGEND OF THE WEEPING-WILLOW. 335 

The faithful maid yet knew this not, 
And still her dreams were bright : 

The day of hopeful woman's thought 
Has neither cloud nor night. 



And upward looked the maid to God, 
As the dead her heart still kept ; 

And upward grew the willow rod 
And drooped its head and wept. 



And now this willow weeps al)ove 
The maiden's lonely grave, 

An emblem of her faithful love, — 
And long such may it wave. 



An honest tear for the faithful maid 
Came trickling down my cheek, 

When 'neath the weeping-willow's shade 
The lady ceased to speak. 



^ The weeping-willow, to which the legend refers, since the 
publication of the poem in 1864, has failed before the axe. It 
stood at the spring on the Salem road half a mile north of 
Greenesburgh. 

^ A branch of the weeping-willow, Salix Babylonica, when 
stuck into moist soil will take root and grow into a tree : each 
branch of a tree being in fact a tree in itself at a certain stage 
of development. 



336 THE LOVE-LORN LADY's LAMENT. 



— 1866 — 

THE LOVE-LORN LADY'S LAMENT. 



I saunter on the sandy shore, 

Where the waves seemed merry girls, 
Bedecking themsel's with seaweed and shells. 

And flowers of foam in their curls ; 
Where now I see in the foam a shroud. 

As if tossed on eternity's bed. 
And here a moan from the depths unknown — 

Alas ! he is dead ! he is dead ! 



I wander through the wooded glen. 

Where Nature seemed a child. 
That prattled among the birds in song. 

And in the flow'rets smiled ; 
Where now the deadly nightshade grows, 

And the owl echoes, over head, 
The clods' mournful sound as they fell in the 
ground — 

Alas ! o'er the dead ! o'er the dead ! 



Ah ! there is no beauty again to the eye 

That bedews a lover's mould, 
And no more music again to the ear 

That has heard a lover knolled ; 
When the heartstrings are struck by the Harper of 

Death, 
And the soul to the discord is wed, 

The head and the heart are forever apart; — 
Alas ! he is dead ! he is dead ! 



THE REBUKE OP THE SAGE. 337 



— 1869 — 
THE REBUKE OF THE SAGE. 



" Within this book the universe is planned, 
Read it, if ye the whole would'st understand ! " 
Cried out the boastful Spirit of the Age 
Unto the hoary-headed Hindu Sage. 



SAGE. 

" From this bold crag, what seest thou in the ocean ? " 

SPIRIT. 

" I see naught but the waves in wild commotion, 
Their upreared ragged crests snow-white and bright 
With a strange, lustrous, phosphorescent light." 

SAGE. 

" Look up, now into the great vault of heaven? " 

SPIRIT. 

" I see the stars — the Crown, the Polar Seven, 
The Pleiades, and that broad band of light. 
The Milky Way, across the brow of night. 

SAGE. 

" Presumptuous man, and would'st thou bid me look 
Within the narrow compass of thy book, 
To know the universe, its moving cause. 
Its ultimate design and governing laws ; 

"■ When, 'twixt a mite and world, thy piercing eye 
The smallest difference cannot descry ; 
When to thy keen discriminating sight, 
In myriads they both appear as light ! 



338 THE TWO TOWEES. 

" Go, take a drop of ocean's sparkling brine, 
And make its hidden secrets wholly thine, 
And thou hast, of the universal plan, 
Learned more than ever yet has vain, vain man. 

" Write down the Individual alone, 
Before the sum of the Unknown and Known ; 
The Known Finite will tell whenever writ 
All knowledge of the Unknown Infinite." 



— 1871 — 
THE TWO TOWERS. 



I. 
THE TOWER OF FIFE. 



Stern Winter lifts his heavy hand ! 

His brow a scowl 

In the lowering cloud ; 

His voice a howl, 

Wild, high and loud. 

In the storm that sweeps over the land — 

Over the hilltop, and over the heath. 

Giving to every cranny a breath 

To mimic the wail of woe unto Death. 

The timid leaves, at the first faint sound, 

Fly, fluttering, helpless, to the ground, 

And, for shelter, look 

Into every nook. 

Even into the watery wards of the brook. 



THE TWO TOWERS. 339 

The lordly oak and the lowly bramble 

Together tremble ; 

And the lapped up lake and the burly river 

Quake and quiver, 

Shudder and shiver. 



Flown are the warblers of holm and hedge ; 

And, a living wedge 

To the warm South driven, 

Flock after flock of geese ^ has riven 

The troubled heaven. 



Withered and wind-strewn are weed and flower ; 

E'en the thistle,' bold 

In his stronghold — 

His thorny castle and prickly tower, — 

Has lost the ruddy glow of his face, 

Shrank to a ghost. 

And wanders about like a spirit. lost, 

Wind and storm tossed. 

Anywhere — 

A flitting flake of the pallor of fear 

Blindly seeking a resting place. 

And Man, who alone wields the weapon of wit- 

Who saddles and bridles the ocean horse. 

And with stream for a spur, a compass a bit. 

Rides where he lists on the wide-world course ; 

Who yokes the oxen of water and wind, 

His corn to grind ; 

Who changes the dart, by the lightning hurled, 

To a carrier-dove ; 

Who soars, on the pinions of gas, above 

The woe and the wail of a wicked world. 

To that good and happy land of love, 

Where holy spirits are feigned to move, — : . 



340 THE TWO TOWEES. 

Even Man, the bold, 

Grows chill and cold. 

When Winter uplifts his heavy hand, — 

When his scowl 

And his howl 

Darken and deafen the 'frighted land, — 

Even Man, the bold. 

Grows chill and cold. 

In dread of stern Winter's icy ire, 

And bolts and bars his main stronghold, 

His Tower of Fire ! 



Stern Winter has struck with a heavy hand ! 

Frozen and numb, 

Palsied and dumb, 

Stark and stiff a corpse lies the land ! 

The pallor of snow is over all. 

And icicles tassel the funeral pall. 

Congealed is the blood of river and lake. 
Yet hark 1 from the depths profound. 
Where Winter can neither strike nor wound, 
You can hear the billows' surge — 
A coronach wild, a dismal dirge, 
At the dead land's wake. 

Now, where is Man, 

Who dares the demons and devils of nature 

As no other creature 

Can? 

Unscathed, unscarred. 

By Winter's blow. 

Dealt heavy and hard 

With shot and shell of ice and snow, 

Aloft he stands in his Tower of Fire ; 



THE TWO TOWERS. 341 

And the terrible ire 

Of Winter dire, 

The little hero now dares to defy, 

You can read these words in his flaming eye, 

" I'll conquer thee yet before I die ; 

This Tower shall be thy funeral pyre ! " 



The worldly reel turns round and round, 
The yarn of time is wound and wound, 
Till a six-months' hank is run ; 
When lo ! the Sun, 
In a blue and balmy midday sky, 
Stands high ! 

And Winter has gone and Summer come ! 

No icy daggers on cottage eaves. 

But nourishing rain in gentle showers ; 

No midnight hoar-frost skeleton-leaves ; 

But bright and blooming noonday flowers; 

And the tempest drum 

And the wild wind fife, 

That led stern Winter to war and strife. 

Are drowned in the brown bee's peaceful hum ; 

And Death, perforce. 

Himself is a corse. 

For all is aglow with the lustre of life ! 

And the death of the land, 

By a blow of stern Winter's heavy hand, 

A tiction — a dream — 

A poet's theme ! 



Nought but a fiction — a dream — 
A poet's theme ! 

2R 



342 THE TWO TOWERS. 

Yet such things may fall in the scales of the mind. 

And kick the beam 

To good or evil : 

Less, by far, 

Can make or mar 

A golden harvest to rustic hind — 

Rain-drop or weevil ! ^ 

For though the Mind 

Is a wizard king, 

To draw in the skull his magic ring, 

And raise the spirits of water and wind — 

Kelpie, goblin and ghost, — 

Aye, and the genii of earth's dark caves. 

And the fiends of fire — 

A host 

Of willing, abject, able slaves. 

To make a deed of their master's desii'e ; 

Yet it seldom can rule that little elf, 

Itself; 

But, with nimble motion. 

At the prick of a whim, or the spur of a notion, 

It turns it about, with supple joint, 

To one or the other cardinal point 

Of the moralist's compass, good or evil, 

God or Devil. 



II. 
THE TO WER OF PRA YER. 



Age, like a dancing fay, 

Tiptoed lightly from day to day — 

The stepping stones laid in the stream of time 

And the sound of his footsteps fell 



THE TWO TOWERS. 343 

Like the faintest notes of a distant bell 

Ringing an evening's chime. 

Yet, step by step he grew 

In size and strength, till every thew 

Was hard and stiff as the archer's yew ; 

And from a child, 

With manners mild, 

He waxed wrathful, warlike, and wild. 

And still, unheeded he stalked by the side 

Of Man in the height of a victor's pride. 

Till lo ! looming up like a tower on high, 

Or Brocken spectre* against the sky, 

Before his victim he takes a stand, 

And raises a stern and heavy hand ! 

The Eye that shone like the sun of Spring, 

High overhead, 

As a waning moon now glimmers through 

A lurid brugh — ^ 

A halo crimson, a circle red. 

The shadow of Age's signet ring. 

The Ear that rang with the laughter of youth. 

And garnered the lessons of wisdom and truth ; 

That treasured the accents of friendship and love. 

And grew spell-bound 

At the magical sound 

Of the song-sorceress of the grove ; 

That gladdened 

At the wedding of music of lute and guitar, 

And maddened 

At the fearful alarm-bell, the tocsin of war ; 

Now strives in vain its door to unlock. 

When words — old friends and old neighbors — 

knock ; 
Strives in vain, though a helping hand 
Be hollowed, and at its elbow stand. 
For age has gnawed, with the brown tooth of rust. 



1^44 THE TWO TOWERS. 

The latch, 

The spring, the bolt, the ward, and the catch, 

And cast 

The key 

Into the dark sea 

Of the past ! 

The Voice, that defied the tempest's wrath 

With a scoff, 

Now gasps for breath, 

And in whispering slippers shuffles after 

A harsh, dry cough — 

Age's demoniac laughter. 

The Back, Man's proud totemic ^ sign, 

That towered erect as a mountain pine. 

Now droops 

And bends and stoops, 

Till, in the brook's 

Still mirror, it looks 

Like the curved scythe 

With which Old Time, like a mower blithe, 

Cuts ever and ever his world-wide swath. 

The brawny Arm and the sinewy Leg 

Assistance beg 

Of each other, 

And give it like brother to brother. 

The leg on its knee rests the feeble hand ; 

And when the legs in turn aid crave 

To walk or stand. 

The hand, of the burden takes the half. 

With a staff— 

The finger of Age that points to the grave ! 

The Heart, deep-rooted in Christian soil, 
That grew like Norway's sturdy pine. 
With arms reachino; far and wide 



THE TWO TOWERS. 345 

On every side 

In the happiness, welfare, and life, 

Of cherished children and worshiped wife ; 

Till mankind, weary of sorrow and toil, 

To rest in its shade would calmly recline, 

And point to the top towering high above, 

To index the way to the land of love ; 

Now, lopped of its limbs, since daughter and son, 

And wife are gone 

To the grave. 

It sways to and fro in the cold world's blast. 

Like a man-of-war's mast 

Battle-scarred, 

Blackened, charred. 

Unrigged and unsparred. 

Forsaken and shunned and dreaded by all ; 

For in its fall 

To the parting deck. 

Is wreck, 

And death beneath the wave ! 

Squandered long since are Youth's treasures 

On tops and toys 

Of sports and joys. 

And rattling baubles of pleasures ; 

And squandered long since the wealth 

Of Manhood's health, 

On crowns of ambition and laurels of fame, 

On ribbons of praise and the scroll of a name, 

On trinkets of vanity, feathers of pride. 

And on hobbies of whim and opinion to ride. 

But what ! can the spendthrift Jew 

Spend all his silver and gold, 

That Age, the inquisitor old. 

Cannot get 

A guinea or two from the heretic yet ? 

No. 

Then go. 



346 THE TWO TOWERS. 

And draw one by one the teeth hy decay. 

And in each foul socket a hot coal lay ; 

On the thumb put the torturing screw; 

On the ankle and foot 

Wedge the tight Spanish boot ; 

And break 

The arms and the legs on the wheel of ache ; 

And straighten yon ugly, crooked back 

On the rack ; 

And on each great toe 

Give a blow 

With agony's cruelest weapon, the knout 

Of gout ; 

Then, then must the miser his hoarded pelf 

Of strength and endurance discover, 

And eke out the mangled mass of himself 

Till the very last coin is paid over ! 

If he die, if he do not, all's well — 

A territion ' 'twill be of the torments of hell ! 

But surely the Mind of Man 

Still looms like El Capitan, 

A mountain rock in its firmness grand, 

Though Age before it will stand, 

And point with his heavy hand, 

To the great Yosemite canon of deatb 

Yawning a thousand fathoms beneath ! 

Ah, no ! Its mountain base 

By the earthquake of fear^s rent asunder ; 

And his face 

Is black with the dark clouds of doubt — 

The lightning of hope darting in and out, 

And despair rolling after in thunder ! 

And in the deep canon of death, 

That yawns beneath, 

The magic mirage unrolls the weird 

Panorama of all that on earth is feared. 

Now magnified and distorted by fancy, 



THE TWO TOWERS. 347 

The mind's self-deceiving necromancy. 

Here hells are depicted in every hue, 

And unrolled to the view, 

Where fire and water, earth and air, 

In all their awful forms appear ; 

And even a round 

Of life, for a sinful soul is found, 

Through the hideous forms 

Of toads, and lizards, and worms. — 

The boldest must view it, with bated breath, 

The fearful mirage of the canon of death ! 



Ah, where shall he go now, Man, the mortal ? 

What power 

Appeal to, and crave 

Himself to save ? 

Or cast e'en a firefly's glimmer of light 

At this midnight hour 

Of the dark and fearful and terrible night, 

That breaks beyond the grave ? 



Before him there stands a feudal tower 

With open portal. 

Low and narrow and small, 

But yet may enter all, 

Who will bend the knee, 

In humility ; 

The head of its helmet uncover ; 

And lower 

The neck for the stroke of a sword ; 

And clasp the hands, without gauntlet or glaive. 

For the chains of a slave ; 

And with heart laid bare, 

Fealty and homage swear 

To the Lord : 

It is the holy Tower of Prayer ! ^ 



348 THE TWO TOWERS. 

Here tapestries hang from hall to hall, 

Where all 

The good and lovely on earth that has proven, 

By the loom of the happiest vision is woven. 

And what heavens of bliss, in this web, for the 

dead. 
Inwrought in pearls and golden thread ! 
Here, angels and bright cherubim ; 
Here, saint singing psalm and hymn ; 
Here, the sea-rover's wild Valhalla joys, 
A midday battle, a midnight carouse ; 
Here, the classic elysium of Jove ; 
Even God's holy presence, 
A life eternal of light and love ; 
And absorption into the Holy Essence, 
Nirvana ; 
And many 

A fiction — a dream — 
A poet's theme. 

The old Man enters the Tower of Prayer ; 

His fear now banished. 

His care now vanished 

Into air ; 

And to and fro through the tapestried halls 

He creeps. 

Till, weary with visions of heaven, he falls. 

And sleeps — 

Sleeps in death in the Tower of Prayer ! 

For Age has followed him even there, 

And before his victim taken a stand, 

And struck tlie death-blow with a heavy hand ! 



Food for worms ! — 

Back to the elemental forms 



THE TWO TOWERS. 349 

Of Matter, Man goes, as science affirms ; 

But the life — the soul — 

The Force that pervaded the whole, 

Where is it ? or here or there ? 

On earth ? in air ? 

Or bound with matter to shift and change 

In its infinite range 

Of forms that the chemist can measure and 
weigh, 

As a farmer can reckon his wheat and his hay ? 

Or apart from matter, a force unique. 

This world or a better again to seek, 

And live as a spirit eternally. 

From sin, and sorrow, and death made free? 

But what say the sextons, old and grey. 

As they dig the grave through the frozen clay? 

Says one — 

'' Aye, Winter and Age are born of one mother, 

Are brother and brother. 

And as Spring follows one, so youth must the 

other. 
In faith. 
After death, 

Again we will both be boys, 

And, perhaps, in the height of our youthful joys, 
And fun, 

Leap over the graves, with nimble foot. 
Where our old bodies moulder and rot." 
The other, nodding his hoary head — 
" ' Tis said, 
The seed 

In Spring will sprout and grow 
Best, where the old stock, withered and dead. 
Falls over — 
A leafy cover 

To melt away with Winter's snow, 
2S 



350 THE TWO TOWERS, 

And cherish, 
And nourish 
Its new-born self, a flower or weed." 



Nought but a fiction — - a dream — 

A poet's theroe. 

Yet such things fall in the scales of the mind 

And kick the beam 

To good or evil ; 

Less, by far, 

Can make or mar 

A golden harvest to rustic hind — 

Rain-drop or weevil ! 



' Plutarch, in his comparison between land creatures and 
water creatures, says, " Cranes, at their first setting out, cast 
themselves into a triangle with the point forward, thereby to 
cut and pierce the wind that bloweth before and about them, 
to the end that their rank, thus arranged and set in order, 
might not possibly be broken." — i^forofe, Holland's translation, 
folio, London, 1657, p. 787. 

The truth, however, lies in this : The eyes of the crane 
are situated on the sides of the head, so that the bird cannot 
see an object directlj' in its front : hence, to follow its leader, it 
is obliged to keep a little to one side in order to see it. The 
same is true of the wild-goose of the poem, Branta Canadensis. 

"^ Oirsium lanceolatum, 

^ See Cowan's Curious History of Insects, pp. 71-2, where an 
account is given of a lawsuit batween the Commune of St. 
Julien and a species of weevil which continued for more than 
forty-two years, during the Fifteenth century. 

* The gigantic spectre of the Hartz mountains in Hanover, 
and seen at sunrise from the Brocken, the loftiest peak of the 
range, is the shadow of the observer cast upon the thin 
vapors then floating in the sky. 



THE TWO TOWERS. 351 

^This old word hrvgh, applied to the hazy circle some- 
times seen around the dii-c of the sun and moon, and generally 
considered a presage of change of weather, has been overlook- 
ed by our standard lexicographers. It has been derived from 
the Greek Brochos, a chain about the neck, possibly our brooch. 
Other forms of it are brogh and brough — the latter occurring in 
the old poem The Farmer's Ha', st. 28 : 

" Meg cries she'll wad baith her shoon, 
That we shall hae wet very soon. 

And weather rough ; 
For she saw about the moon 

A niickle brough." 

Another word applied to the lunar halo and not found in 
the dictionaries is burr. — Vide Brande, Jamieson, et al. The 
" lurid briigh " of the poem refers to the arcus senilis, or red 
circle about the ball of the eye of aged persons, the result of 
fatty degeneration of the cornea. 

^ Totemic — characteristic, specific, an adjective from toierrt, 
an Indian word for a picture of a bird, turtle, or other animal, 
used by the North American Indians as a family, or tribal 
symbol or designation — a rude kind of heraldic coat-of arms, 
and so termed by early writers. 

" Each his own ancestral totem. 

Each the symbol of his household." — Longfellow. 

The signification of the upright back of Man is elaborated 
in the initial poem of. the writer's Southwestern Pennsylvania in 
Song and Story, entitled "The Last of the Mammoths." 

7 Terriiion, another iiseful word not found in our standard 
dictionaries. Its meaning is apparent from the following quo- 
tation from Lieber's Encyclopaedia Americana, sub voce Torture : 
" The mere threat of torture is termed territion, and is distin- 
guished into verbal territion, in which the accused is given up to 
the executioner, who conduc^ts him to the engines of torture, 
and describes, in the most appalling manner possible, the suf- 
ferings which he may endure, and the real territion in which he 
is actually placed upon the machine, but is not subjected to 
torture." 

^At the time this poem was written, the writer had not 

made an especial study of the science of symbolism. In the 

poems " Atlantis " and " Chautauqua," the signification of the 
attitudes of prayer is given correctly. 



352 THE JEWELS I PRIZE. 



— 1874 — 
THE JEWELS I PRIZE. 



Let the miserly hoard up their symbols of self, 

Their copper and silver and gold, 
Their jewels and gems — base, mineral pelf, 

Inanimate, senseless, and cold ! 
But to me give the treasures of life's tidal flood, 

Impassioned and sentient, and warm, 
That burst into being and beauty with blood. 

In woman, life's loveliest form ! 



To me give the jewels of mirth and delight. 

With which nothing earthy can vie — 
The diamonds that flash with a welcoming light. 

And gleam in a fond woman's eye ; 
To me give the jewels of gladness and bliss. 

The heart's fondly found treasure-trove — 
The rubies that flush with a passionate kiss, 

Instinctive, responsive to love ! 



And the golden metal called precious is dross. 

When compared to the golden net, 
Which Nature has woven of light-flowing floss, 

And out in the stream of life set ; 
And oh, to be caught in that golden mesh, 

And tangled with love's deftest art, 
To feel as it tightens the quivering flesh, 

And the beat of a fast throbbing heart ! 



MAID OF MAHONING. 353 



— 1875 — 
MAID OF MAHONING. 



Maid of Mahoning/ asleep in thy bower ! 

Beauty as cold as if chiseled in stone — 
Or as the colorless wax-petaled flower* . 

Drooping in dread of the pine-forest's moan ; 
And as impassionate ! Maid of Mahoning, 

Stilled would the aspen leaf be in thy breath ! 
Hast thou no moments of sighing and moaning ? 

Art in the Vale of the Shadow of Death ? 



Hark ! 'tis a voice from the lips, that, close-pressing, 

Oft to thine own, behind secresy's veil. 
Glowing with rapture's protracted caressing, 

Measured the moments of bliss, like a snail ! 
Know'st thou that voice in the wild night imploring ? 

Yea, though the tempest and torrent combine — 
Drowning all sounds in the flood of their roaring — 

Sleeping or waking, that voice thou'dst define 



Maid of Mahoning, a faint flush is creeping 

Over thy white neck and over thy brow ; 
Crimson thy face is — oh, canst thou be sleeping? 

Canst in thy dreaming again hear his vow ? 
Maid of Mahoning, ah, why dost thou tremble. 

And thy breath quicken — at what fond alarms ? 
Cannot the heart in thy bosom dissemble ? 

Sleeping or waking, wouldst be in his arms ? 



354 THE DEMON LOVER. 

Maid of Mahoning, oh, dream on forever; 

Web after web weave in fantasy's loom ; 
Wake not to wail that realities sever — 

Wake not to weep at mortality's tomb ! 
Maid of Mahoning, in dreams with thy lover, 

Limpet thy lips in a soul-sealing kiss ; 
Then let the tide of time rise and roll over, 

Thou wilt be ever the Spirit of Bliss ! 



' " The next spring ^we moved to a town about fifteen mileB 
off, called Mo-ho-ning, which signifies a lick." — McCnlUnigh. 

^The wax-pipe, Monotropa unijfora. 



THE DEMON LOVER. 



From ten, when she kissed her fond mother good- 
night, 
Until twelve, Isabel, at the window, has sat. 
In the shaded light's gloom of a still, curtained room. 
When lo ! through the casement there flutters a 
bat! 



A bat, in a suit of the unseen at night, 

On a wing of the silence that will not alarm, 

When behold ! in the gloom of the still, curtained 
room. 
The wing of the bat has become a man's arm ! 



The wing of the bat has become a man's arm. 

That encircles the form of the fond, watching 
maid. 



THE DEMON LOVER. 355 

In a silent embrace that is throbbing and warm, 

Till a hot breath has left and lost all in a shade ! 



But behold ! the bright sun of midsummer has risen, 
And gone with the bat are the shades of the 
night ; 
E'en the mocking-bird swings in its bright gilded 
prison, 
And merrily sings in unfeigned delight ! 



But thrice has the breakfast-bell rung in the hall, 
Ere Isabel tremblingly trips down the stair, 

With her hand on the baluster, lest she may fall, 
And the flower of yesterday still in her hair ! 



" My daughter ! my daughter ! what aileth thee, tell ? 

As the dead thou art cold, as the dead thou art 
white ! " 
" mother ! mother ! I'm happy and well — 

I have seen but a bat in my room the past night." 



^'But a bat?" "Yes, a bat." "Only that?" "Only 
that." 
" Then a bat let it be and thou happy and well ; 
But, my daughter, beware, lest the flower in thy hair, 
■ That has faded o'er night be not burnt — where 
bats dwell ! " 



Aye, call him a bat, and a bat he becomes, 

As many old fables of fantasy tell : 
He that sucks the warm blood of inflamed woman- 
hood, 

Is well understood in the Vampire of Hell ! 



356 love's holy grace. 



LOVE'S HOLY GRACE. 



Yes, bright be the dew that bespangles 

The spider's gauze web in the grass, 
Reflecting the dawn as it dangles, 

In its fairy -formed, globular glass ; 
But brighter m}^ darling's eye beaming 

With the fire of a lip-quiv'ring kiss, 
Its sparkles a galaxy gleaming, 

Illuming a heaven of bliss. 

And red be the maple buds ' breaking 

When Spring awakes frost-nipped at dawn, 
When ice-beaded branches are shaking. 

And showering pearls on the lawn ; 
But redder my darling's cheek-blossom 

That bursts into loveliest charms, 
When Winter has fled from her bosom, 

And Summer has come in my arms ! 

And pure as the wave of the fountain 

That wells in the moss-bosomed nook, 

And breaks o'er the rocks of the mountain, 
In a free, joyous, loud-laughing brook ; 

But purer the blood, though it's burning, 
That thrills in my lov'd one's embrace ; 

For the heart-throb that trembles with yearning- 
Is hallowed by Love's holy grace ! 



' The red, or swamp maple, Acer nibnim. " In spring, the 
appearance of the tree is remarkable for the deep crimson 
flowers with which it is thickly clothe/i." — Wood. 



THE WITCH OF WESTMOEELAND. 357 



THE WITCH OF WESTMORELAND. 



" A witch ? God have mercy ! I'll warrant a hag 
So old that the devil himself cannot tell 

When the crooked and wrinkled and twisted zigzag 
Of a wry-mouthed old spinster was first leagued 
with — well " — 

" Lord ! no, sir ! She's only a year old to-day, 

And as round and as red and as sweet as a peach ! 
And the wonder is, not when she leagued — as you 
say, 
But that heaven could spare such a witch of a 
witch ! " 

" Well, what can she do, this quintessence of evil — 
This perversion of age in her wicked profession ? 

I presume she can ride on a broom like the devil, 

And crawl thro' the keyhole to secret confession? " 

" No ! Csesar Augustus ! she rides in a gig, 

Or is carried about in the gentlest of arms ; 

And crawl thro' a keyhole -r- why, man, she's this big ! 
And the doors open wide in the face of her 
charms ! " 

" Well, seeing's believing — but what of her cat. 

With its yellow eyes, hump-back, and tail up, and 
grin, 
As big as a barn and as black as a hat — 
The witch's select incarnation of sin ! " 
2T 



358 THE WITCH OF WESTMORELAND. 

" Her cat ? Why, my friend it is yet but a kit, 
As white as the snow and as soft as old silk ; 

Nor devilish, save an occasional fit. 

Which our doctor is treating with sulphur and 
milk ! " 

" Well, what of her figures in wax — I suppose, 

She has or does something of which I have read ? 

Can she melt off the point of a fair lady's nose, 

And open the eyes and the mouth of the dead ? " 

" Can she melt off the point — I have seen her myself 
Melt three or four noses to nothing at all ; 

And I've seen her quite often, the mischievous elf. 

Make a dummy of gum move its eyes — yea, and 
squall ! " 

" And of course, then, you've seen this remarkable 
witch 
Mat the manes of the horses and tie the cows 
tails, 
Sour the milk in the churn, and give one the itch 

Till he scratch like the devil and pray for his 
nails ? " 

" Well, no ; not exactly ; but this I will swear, 

I've seen her tie knots and I never could loose 
'em — 
Yes, the tightest of knots in my beard and my hair ; 
And as for sour milk, just behold my shirt- 
bosom ! " 

" Ah, yes ; now I take — yes, you mean — yes, I see ; 

Well, no matter — expect me to see her at dinner. 
With my bell, book, and candle to save at least me 

From the spell of the witch and the hell of the 
sinner." 



OH, I WOULD LOVE YOU ALWAY. 359 

" Yes, come, and your whole end of town bring along, 
And I'll show you this witch in the arms of my 
wife — 

The proudest of mothers a million among. 

And the happiest father you've seen in your life ! " 



OH, I WOULD LOVE YOU ALWAY! 



Oh, I would kiss your lips — your lips — 

Oh, I would kiss your lips — 
When warm and moist in the morning of life ; 
When hot and parched in the noonday strife ; 
When burnt out ashes at evening's rest ; 
When clammy and cold as the clay that pressed 

In the night that knows no dawn. 



And I would look in your eye — your eye — 
And I would look in your eye — 

When blue and bright in the morning's gleam ; 

When gray and dazed in the midday's beam ; 

When red and ringed in the gloaming's light; 

When black and glazed and blind in the night- 
In the niffht that knows no dawn. 



Oh, I would love you alway — alway — 
Oh, I would love you alway — 

In the flash of life of the maid in the morn ; 

In the flush of noon by the mother borne ; 

In the shadow of grandmother's eventide ; 

In the darkness — yea, and whatever betide 
In the night that knows no dawn ! . 



360 A LETTER TO A LADY. 



A LETTER TO A LADY. 



Nature has made you, Mary, human, 

To be by thought and feeling moved ; 

Nature has made you, Mary, woman. 
To be of mankind The Beloved. 



But Art would make you, Mary, golden — 
An idol in your form attired. 

To be by distant eyes beholden 

And in their staring The Admired. 

Nature has made you, Mary, charming. 
That in seclusion you may meet 

Attention in your service arming 
To lay Devotion at your feet. 

But Art would make you, Mary, dashing, 
That, sex defying, you might move, 

And hurl, amid your thunder's crashing, 
The lightnings of a mimic Jove ! 

Beware ! beware ! The man who kneels 
Before the golden calf of Art, 

Hypocrisy alone he feels — 

Else he's a groveler at heart ! 

And so beware the man who falls 
Before the thunder-bolt of Art ; 

He but obeys the prompter's calls. 

And on the stage plays the fool's part. 



A LETTER TO A LADY. 361 

Be Nature's maiden, Mary, human, 

As youth and health and beauty can ; 

And learn that he who loves a woman, 
Loves only as becomes a man. 



He comes — he wooes ; but that alone 
Is but the blowing of a bubble ; 

She waits — receives ; then all is done - 
Love in humanity is double. 



So, step by step, mark his advance, 

That comes, as it becomes a true man 

Impelled by feeling — not by chance — 
To love as man mav love a woman. 



If you discern aught in his form 

That clouds futurity's clear sky ; 

It is a presage of a storm ; 

Take heed in time — Let him pass by. 

If not, and he come like the Sun 

Diffusing round him warmth and light, 

Until, his course though winter run, 

He gleaming climbs the vernal height — 

And you, another Earth, receive — 

Melting from formal ice and snow, 

Until the frosts of distrust leave, 
And violets confiding grow — 



Remain another Earth, in faith, 

That Nature doth your course approve ; 
For there's no Joshua but Death 

To stay the climbing Sun of Love. 



362 THE VOICE OF THE ANVIL, 

And Summer will as surely warm 

For you as for our Mother Earth ; 

For you are she in woman's form 

Evolved through eonids of birth. 



Then, Mary, be yourself, the creature 

Whom Nature hath in you approved ; 

Incarnate Woman-Earth of Nature, 
Be, by the Sun of Man, beloved ! 



And let the nameless works of Art, 
In man's or woman's form attired, 

Be banished from your head and heart 
To the cold moon, to be admired. 



THE VOICE OF THE ANVIL. 



Aye, a merry old man am I — 

And a wink is as good as a nod — 
I ne'er let the rust eat into my trust 

In my anvil and my God \ 
Though in the grave are my wife and child, 

And I am the last of my clan, 
Yet my heart is light from morning till night 

In doing the best that I can. 
I work away from day to day, 
And while I work to God I pray ; 
With my iron anvil's voice, 
I worship and rejoice. 



FATE. 363 

Aye, a merry old man am I, 

While I hear my anvil ring 
In sweet accord, while to the Lord 

I work away and sing — 
Sing in the trust of my anvil and God, 

From morning until even, 
That the voice of mirth once beloved on earth, 

May still be heard in heaven ! 
Until I moulder into dust. 
And my old anvil turns to rust, 
When, among the loved and blest, 
I shall forever rest. 



FATE. 



Ah, who can fathom the depth of Fate ? 

Two girls part at the college gate — 

Two girls with kindred heart and soul, 

Like two trees with a common bole, — 

As like as twins, their chances even 

For life on earth or love in heaven ; 

And yet before a twelve-month flies. 

The one is wed, the other — dies ! 

The clock strikes east and the clock strikes west- 

The one is happy, the other blest ! 

Eleven — twelve ! — the nuptial kiss ; 

Eleven — twelve ! — eternal bliss ! 

The bride of Life and the bride of Death — 

The one bound with an orange wreath, 

The other crowned with immortelle ! 

While, ding ! ding ! 

The church-bells ring 
A wedding-chime and a passing-knell ! 



364 EPIGRAMS. 



AN EPIGRAM. 



A nose, not well put out of joint, 
Nor long in coming to the point. 



A POET. 



His model, Beauty, with the sculptor's art, 
The poet shapes the marble of the Heart. 



A TOAST TO WOMAN. 



I drink to the woman aglow with the fire, 

That burns on the altar eternal of Love ; 

A spark from whose eye inflames man to aspire 

To wield for her glory the lightnings of Jove!' 



Subsequently incoiporated in the poem " Psappha." 



A REASON IN RHYME. 



To feed the ancient fire of Love, 

Required of vestal maids a corps ; 

So may the flame as sacred prove 

Though fanned in me by half a score. 



DESPAIR. 



Ah, yes ; I have lived : I have loved and have lost ! 
The earth is but ashes and I am a ghost ! 



EPIGRAMS. 365 

HER CHARACTER. 



She was, in everything she said and did, but human — 
Her vice and virtue in these two lines you may 
scan : 

As false as only woman can be false to woman, 
And true as only woman can be true to man. 



INDECISION. 



With every waver in her mind, 

A quiver in my heart, I find ; 

My faith and doubt turn with her thought- 

" I love her " and '* I love her not ! " 

I could not change in feeling faster 

Were I divining with an aster. 

And felt alternate love and hate 

As leaves alternate fixed my fate. 



ANOTHER. 



The trout in the transparent stream 
Doth like the pebbled channel seem ; 
So changeful with her thoughts I prove — 
Tell me, my heart, if this be love ? 



TO 



When I was lost in melancholy's night. 
With naught but darkness in my staring sight, 
Afar the music of your voice I heard — 
And lo ! a star appeared with every word ! 
Until, I stood beneath a gleaming throng — 
In the soft light of heaven — in your song ! 
2U 



366 • EPIGRAMS. 

TO A SILKWORM. 



Spin, spin, thou silk-reeling worm, 

For our lady another thread, 
That a grown may thrill to encircle her form. 

When thou art forgotten and dead. 

Sing, sing, importunate voice. 

For our lady another strain. 
That an echo may live in her soul and rejoice, 

When thou art heard never again ! 



TO 



When the storm of passion pervades the heart, 

And the clouds crash together, the lightning will dart : 

Perchance to slay, with a dagger of light, 

The babe asleep in its cradle at night ; 

Perchance to save, like a beacon of heaven, 

The tempest-tossed ship to the rock of wreck driven 1 

But, believe, in the calm of the head above, 

The flash of the Heart has been forethought by Love 1 



LOVE'S RULE OF THREE. 



The time — -whenever it is dark is beat for speedy 

wooing ; 
For many, when they cannot see, don't know what 

they are doing. 

The place — wherever none but two can either see or 

hear, 
Without a lantern in the hand or trumpet to the ear. 

The circumstance — a man and maid, each bold a half 

to go it. 
Forgetting that two halves will make a whole before 

they know it. 



EPIGRAMS. 367 

THE EYE AND THE IMAGINATION. 



The eye lays an egg — 

Imagination hatches it; 
The eye bends to beg — 

Imagination snatches it. 
The eye clothes a maid — 

Imagination strips her ; 
The eye turns afraid — 

While imagination grips her ! 



KATY-DID. 



Aye, Katy did and kindly, 
As alone a woman can, 

In her innocence love blindly, 
A wicked, worthless man. 



ASTRONOMICAL. 



Nay, nay, Lenore ; astronomy is not 

A science to be buried and forgot ; 

It hath its uses — to define a kiss : 

A shooting-star across the sky of bliss ; 

That seems a star of love to youthful eyes ; 

But is a meteor unto the wise, 

That differs from a star of love as far 

As doth a spark from an eternal star ! 



A FOURTH OF JULY ALTERNATIVE. 



Either America's eagle on high. 
In the blue vault of empyrean sky. 
Or a — this glorious Fourth of July 
Musca volens in a bloodshotten eye ! 



368 EPIGRAMS. 

THE HEART ENTOMBED. 



On yonder hill, when clothed in summer's green, 
There's but a leafy thicket to be seen ; 
But when disrobed by winter, and laid bare, 
A grave's white head-stone is see standing there. 

So social Mira summers to a blush, 
Leav,es to a smile and flowers to a flush ; 
While, sad and lonely, she, with blighted bloom. 
Sighs for the dead and winters to a tomb ! 



ON KISSING. 



A look may lead a lass to love ; 

A hand may help with a staff ; 
But a lip that loiters and lingers about hers 

Will shorten the way by a half. 



We were but schoolmates at finger-tips. 
And knew not the lesson of bliss, 

Till, lost each on the other's lips, 

We learned it by heart in a kiss. 



A LOVERS LAMENT. 



Alas ! the bird, that built her nest 

Within the bower of my breast. 

Has flown away and left her brood 

To famish in the want of food ; 

To flutter all in vain to fly ; 

To gasp a moment and to die ; 

To make all foul where all was fair ; 

To banish Hope, and bid Despair 

Come, loathe the light of sun and moon. 

And mourn amid the joys of June. 



EPIGRAMS. 369 

ON A RINGING BELL. 



Ah, the heartless, cold, indifferent bell ! 
With loud-tongued clangor ringing as well 
A wedding chime as a funeral knell — 
Ding ! dong ! ding to heaven ! ding ! dong ! ding 
to hell ! 



A LOVER'S PRAYER. 



I ask what thou canst give 
Alone, Almighty Jove : 
As others love to live, 
So let me live to love. 



LOVING AND LONGING. 



I've seen a maiden young and trim, 
Sit down alone and sigh for him ; 
Day after day, year after year. 
Until her eyes grew weak and blear — 
Until her hair grew white and thin — 
Until her bones grew thro' her skin — 
Until — her hope did not forsake her — 
Her corpse embraced an undertaker ! 

So I have seen a tender goose. 
To quit her nesting-place refuse, 
And, in a hopeful mother-mood, 
Upon a cold potato brood, 
Until — to all the world forgotten, 
And the potato long since rotten, 
She was too weak and numb to move. 
And died in the fond hope of love. 

Ah, what a blessing to creation, 
A loving heart and expectation ! 



370 EPIGRAMS. 

ON AN ENGAGEMENT RING. 



It is a dainty, jeweled band 
Around a finger of a hand ; 
And yet it is a golden girth 
Encompassing both heaven and earth — 
All — all, save one poor wretched part, 
A slighted lover's broken heart. 



LITERARY HERMIT CRABS. 



There be eke certayne ermite crabbes amonge 
Ye menne of letteres who indyte in songe, 
And he is of them who wille back ye breeche 
Of his bare witte into anotheres speeche — 
Wry the in ye convolutions of rime. 
An he ye poete whelke where alle ye tyme ! 
But Godde a mercye onne his sillye harte, 
He is swyche only in his hyndere parte ! 

There are, too, certain hermit crabs among, 
The men of letters who indite a song ; 
And he is of them who will back the breech 
Of his bare wit into another's speech — 
Writhe in the convolutions of his rhyme, 
As if he were the poet all the time ! 
But God have mercy on- his simple heart, 
He is such only in his hinder part ! ' 



^ Subsequently incorporated in " The Plain of Troy." 



A SIMILE. 



A fond yet fearful woman, like a moon, 
Within the orbit of a jealous eye, 
Revolving in impending dissolution ! 



EPIGRAMS. 371 

GRAVEYARD GROTESQUES. 



Since graveyards yawn, why may they not, then, 

laugh, 
And Epigram poke fun at Epitaph, 
Till tombstones hold their sides with bated breath. 
And smiles sepulchral wreathe the skull of Death ! 



" Tread lightly here — " Ah, yes ; pephaps, 
Our feet are shod with thorns ; 

Or worse than that — Jehoshaphat ! 

The corpse may be covered with corns ! 



" Here lies James Hyer — " No further enquire, 

For the leopard cannot 

Change a single spot, 
And no more can his nature, a liar ! 



" Here rests in peace Llewellyn Rhees — " 

I prithee read no more ; 
For leaving life, he left his wife 

And everlasting war ! 



" Tread lightly here — " What mockery 

Addressing thyself to one 
Who weighs no more than ninety-four, 

Thou stone that weighest a ton ! 



" She was a thrifty wife — " She was, indeed ; 
I've seen her in her hour of housewife need. 
O'er her bare legs her husband's breeches pull, 
And comb his head with a three-legged stool ! 



" Remember, man, as you pass by, 
As you are now so once was I — " 
Jake Simpson, you're a wicked liar ; 
You were a clerk, while I'm a 'Squire ! 



372 EPIGRAMS. 

" Tread lightly, stranger, as you pass, 

For Samuel Greer 

Is lying here — " 
Ah, yes ; I remember his left eye was glass ! 



" Gone to meet his mother-in-law — " 
May I be curst, 
But that's the worst 

Of epitaphs I ever saw ! 



" Here lies Jane Brown — " Don't speak so loud 

Lest the flirt arise 

To attract your eyes, 
By waving the tail of her shroud ! 



THE LAST KISS OF LOVE. 



Confound it, Kate, Byron was crazy 
To extol so the first kiss of love, 

Or worse, too intolerably lazy 

To learn what comparisons prove. 

The first kiss of love ! — what is in it ? 

No matter if stolen and sweet, 
It flashes away in a minute, 

And you cannot the first kiss repeat ! 

Why, any man, Kate, in his senses. 

Beginning to kiss in the past. 
Continues in all moods and tenses. 

And reaches ahead for the last ! 

The last kiss of love's odd or even, 

The number that can't be surpassed — 

In the ladder that leads up to heaven, 

Sure, the round is the best that comes last ! 



EPIGRAMS. 373 

TO YOU, MAN. 



When the lips of a woman — 
Be she lovely and wise ! — 

Speak falsely to you, Man, 

With the blackguard, she lies. 

When the vow of a woman — 
Be she precious in pelf! — 

Is broken to you, Man, 
She perjures herself. 

When the kiss of a woman — 

Be she blushing to scarlet ! — - 

Is envenomed to you, Man, 
It's the kiss of a harlot. 

When the soul of a woman, 
In selfishness nursed. 

Is deceitful to you, Man, 
In itself it's accursed. 

Then bid such a woman 

An eternal farewell. 
If you are a true man, 

And would escape hell ! 



JAM SATIS. 



Rhymes and jingles. 
Jingles and rhymes, 

Till the ear tingles 

And aches betimes, 
2V 



374 ONCE, AND ONCE ONLY- 



ONCE, AND ONCE ONLY. 



He that sees the same object twice, is blind in the 

second seeing ; 
He that lives the same moment again, is dead for the 

instant being. 

He that breathes the same air twice, breathes bane in 

the second breath ; 
Opposing, the new is the habit of life, the old is the 

habit of death. 

Earth is ubiquity changeful to man, in season, in 

weather, and sky ; 
Else with repeated sensations of same, he'd weary, 

then madden, and die. 

Wouldst thou have proof, to the dungeon cell go, the 

waste of the desert or sea, 
Or in thy bed lie awake in the night, and one sound 

and sight hear and see. 

If thou, Philosopher, wouldst live, indeed, the highest 

existence on earth. 
Let no sensation — or feeling or thought— have in 

thee a second birth. 

If thou, fond Lover, wouldst climb to love's height, 

repeat not a step of thy bliss. 
But, to a mile-dream prolong every thought — to a 

thousand leagues a kiss. 

Once, only once in love's passion embrace, then nobly 

— most gloriously die, 
Pinnacled on the most heavenly height in humanity's 

rapturous sky ! 



NIAGARA. 375 

Or live, to totter down, step after step, decaying in pace 

with thy lust, 
Till at the foot, thou art laid out a corse — a stench 

amid rottenest dust ! 



NIAGARA. 



LoQuiTUK — A suicidal debauchee, to whom the world is as 
burnt out without as within. 



Die, like a dog with a curse-pointed kick in a 

dyke? 
Die, like a hog, when the pork -market tyrant cries, 

Strike ? 
Die like a leper with loathesome disease — 
A sewer of quackery — carrion of fees ? 
Die of old age with a shudder and chill, 
'Mid weeping relations disputing my will ? 
Die like the millions of mortals that drag o'er a 
Life of cold commonplace ? Never ! Niagara ! 

I that have breathed with the lungs of a fire; 
I that have loved with insatiate desire — 
Clasped with the strong arms of sensuous might — 
Whirled in the wild waltz of maddened delight — 
Whirled in the reeling of rapture to stagger — a 
Vortex suspended in passion's Niagara ! 

I that have reveled in thrills, from a kiss 
To the wallow of lust in a surfeit of bliss ! 
Till, bloated, besotted, and rotten with sin, 
The world is as burnt out without as within ! — 
Save thee, Death, in a bullet — a dagger — a 
Leap in the flood of the mighty Niagara ! 



376 CHAUTAUQUA. 

Save thee, Niagara ! Torrent of Death ! 
If thou canst extinguish this passion-fired breath ! 
Roll up resistless thy might in ane flood ! 
Seethe in thy rapids like love-boiling blood ! 
Quiver an instant in brink-edge orgasm ! 
Plunge ! and go down with me into the chasm — 
Into the thunder, the mist-cloud, and flag-array 
Stolen from heaven, thou hell of Niagara ! 

Ha ! how thou hugg'st me in love's last embrace. 
Bared breast to breast, and hot face to face ! 
Over the breakers we hurriedly ride — 
Through the swift rapids estatic we glide — 
Kiss me — oh, kiss me while yet there is 

breath ! — 
Down, down, together we go, love, to death ! — 
Into the black depth, and into the blacker Aye ! — 
Laura-limbed, Laura-lipped, Laura-Niagara ! 



CHAUTAUQUA. 



A SONG OF SYMBOLISM. 



A lake — 

As fair as only fantasy can make, 

With half-closed eyes, 

At even, 

In the glamour of glowing, cloudy skies - 

In the vision illusive of heaven. 

On this lake, a boat — 

As light as the leaf that is silently borne. 

On the balmy breath 

Of a warm October morn, 



CHAUTAUQUA. 377 

From the tree above to the wave beneath, 
With neither rustle nor ripple to note 
Whether breezes waft or waters float — 
Nay, as light as the boat by poesy wrought 
As an idle toy in the workshop of thought. 

Afloat, 

On this lake, in this boat, 

A thing, encased in a mottled husk, 

Of silk and cotton and straw and leather, 

In a strange entanglement held together, 

And diffusing an odor of musk ! — 

Fie ! 

An eye 

Of the self-same radiant blue 

That gives infinity its hue ; 

A lip as red as blood can stain. 

When crimson art'ry and purple vein 

Unite in a common mesh, 

In a gauze of semi-transparent flesh ; 

A neck, of the upturning crucible's glow. 

When the molten steel begins to flow : 

As white and as clear, with a dazzled-eye hint 

Of, within it, an exquisite violet tint'; 

A form without a single straight line, 

In a series of arcs that all beauty combine ; 

A motion extending, with varying curve. 

The lines of her form, without tangent or swerve ; 

A being — the wax of humanity's mold — 

To be melted by love — to receive — to hold — 

To shape in the pattern impressed in the past. 

And turn out alternates of self with each cast ; 

A woman ! a woman of womanly worth 

As ever made heaven existence on earth. 

And with this woman, one 

Other, 

Neither sire nor son. 



378 CHAUTAUQUA. 

Nor uncle nor brother, 
Nor husband nor friend, 
And yet a man — a man 
To dare and do what only man can. 
And here an end — 

She, bending the bough, a ripe luscious peach ; 
He hungry — the food he most craves within 
reach. 

It is Maud and I that, in a boat, 
On Lake Chautauqua, are afloat ! 
Together we pull with measured oar ; 
Together we view the receding shore ; 
Together we join our voices in song. 
And merrily sing as we glide along. 



Away ! away ! o'er the waters blue ! 
Away ! away ! in our light canoe ! 
When the wave is calm and the sky is clear, 
And the bark that floats between, my dear, 
Has only two oars in it — 

Two oars that feather 

The wave together ! 

Away f away ! o'er the waters wide ! 
Away ! away ! o'er the billowy tide ! 
When, tho' death is below, there is heaven above, 
And a world at rest between, my love. 
With only two souls in it — 
Two souls that feather 
The wind together ! 



Till our stroke, like a sledge, 

Has driven 

The keen prow-edge 

Of our boat, like a wedge, , 



CHAUTAUQUA. ' 379 

To the splintering heart 

Of the log-like lake — 

Till the lake in twain is riven, 

And gapes in our widening wake ; 

And Maud and I from the world are apart ! 

A motionless speck — 

An indistinct fleck, 

To the eye on the distant shore 5 

Where the evening shadows away into night ; 

Where the casements lengthen to streamers of 

light; 
Where the reveling's roar — 
The crash of the music, the dancing, the din — 
Is heard no more, 

Save in the faint note of a lone violin — 
A thread of gossamer sound so thin, 
That sense is in doubt — 
Is it something without. 
Or something within ? 

I sit in the bow, — nay, to sit, I seem ; 

For I am ubiquity's self in my dream ; 

Maud touches the oar with a finger tip, 

And listlessly toys with its dainty drip — 

That touch of the girl 

Transmutes the drops and the wave into pearl. 

She smiles ; a wavelet encircles the oar 

And widens out toward the shadowy shore — 

Till the lake is wreathed from a central isle 

In the mirth sympathetic and play of her smile. 

She laughs ; the water-lap under the bow 

Echoes her voice to the depth below ; 

While the mirth-bounding midges bear it on high, 

To the stars that flash from her upturning eye. 

The lake with her touch is pearled ; 
The lake with her smile is whorled ; 



380 CHAUTAUQUA. 

While the depth below and the height above 

Rejoice 

With her voice ; 

The world — the all-inclusive world 

Is intermingled Maud and I in love ! 



The air — so still ! and the wave and the sky — so 

dark! 
Sound and sight 
Are lost in the night 
That envelopes the world of love in our bark. 

Closer, Maud, creep ! 

The heart is not hushed in the swelling breast ; 

The love-lighted eye has not sunk in the west 

Of sleep. 

Then come ! — Interlocked, love, our hearing and 

sight 
Will know not of silence, will know not of night. 

Thou tremblest, love ! Thy breath is warm — 

Nay, hot and fast — 

A feverish, full, and broken blast ! 

Dost fear the calm will break into storm ? 

Hark J 

A sound 

Gurgles up from the depth profound, 

And startles the sable stillness around ! 

And now a shock ! 

And a rising wave that begins to rock 

The listless bark ! 

Nay, calm thy alarms — 

Thou art safe in my arms ! 

Our boat 

Though a light and fragile shell, will float 

Above 



CHAUTAUQUA. 381 

The highest as well as the lowest wave, 

And save 

Us in the trust of love ! 

In all its fury, breaks the storm, 
With tumultuous force and in frensied form ! 
Till the ear is deaf with the thunder's cj-ash, 
And the eye is blind with the lightning's flash ! — 
Till our bark to the heavens above is tossed — 
Is shivered — is sinking — down, down — and is 
lost! 

Nay, lost in a swoon, Maud and I ; 

While the boat 

Keeps afloat. 

And drifts away 

Quietly into a silent bay 

Deep 

In sleep ; 

Where — how long I know not — we lie, 

And recover. — 

The storm is over. 

The shore is at hand. 

And, amid the crash of the revelers' band, 

At midnight, we land. 



Round and round the waltzers go, 
Turning on the tuneful toe, 
Spinning fast or reeling slow, 

In close-clasped gyration ; 
Little eddies of the ball. 
In the whirlpool of the hall. 
In the mighty vortical 

Of the earth's rotation ! 
2W 



382 CHAUTAUQUA. 

With the winding, waltzing world, 
Tops by gayety thumb-twirled, 
Maud and I are wildly whirled 

In the maze around us ; 
Round and round — the lake is dry ! 
Round and round -— the storm a lie ! 
Round and round — till Maud and I 

Are as evening found us ! 



The morning is black ; 

The sky is ragged with rack ; 

The air is heavy and hot ; 

A feverish doubt 

Runs in and out. 

And is answered not — 

In a cheek that blanches and burns ; 

In an eye that deadens and dazzles by turns ; 

In a heart that stifles and throbs ; 

In a warmth that gives and a coldness that robs. 

The deck is dull ; the book a block ; 

The song a sigh ; the run a walk ; 

The walk a mope with hasty turn ; 

The look in pity half to spurn ; 

The ring unworn ; 

The letter torn ; 

The rose a ragged, bleeding thorn ! — 

A bleeding thorn that bleeds afresh. 

When I draw near : 

Like murdered flesh 

When the murderer doth appear. 



In the afternoon, 

The hammock hangs like a horned dry-moon, 
And Maud reclines in the crescent lap — 
By a strangely sweet, fortuitous hap, 



CHAUTAUQUA. 383 

Blending in one symbol together, 

Woman in love in the trust of fair weather. 

Afar, I dare to speak. 

And with my tongue, my foot keeps pace ; 

Nearer, nearer, till I can trace 

The tears in great drops coursing down her 

cheek — 
Till I can look into her eye, 
And with mine ardent gaze, the tear-source dry. 

The heaviness begins to lift ; 
And in the rack there is a rift ; 
The sun pours down a golden flood 
That warms the blood, 
Till it lightly flows, 
And brightly glows. 

We walk 

And talk 

Together. 

I place a feather 

Of fern in her hair ; 

While my tremulous fingers linger there, 

Till the stem is broken. 

But no matter th' inanimate token — 

There's a thicket of fern 

At every turn ! 

The rack is gone ; 

The faintest cloud has flown ; 

The sun descends in a glowing west ; 

The world reclines in enraptured rest. 



It is even. 

The earth is poised in an ambient heaven. 

Every object against the sky 

That listless revery can descry. 



384 CHAUTAUQUA. 

Is the haloed head of a hallowed saint, 
Such as ecstatic limners paint. 

The purple haze 

Comes into being like a mist 

Of amethyst, 

And grows within our silent gaze, 

Till, in one comprehending whole. 

Of love impassioned, sentient soul, 

Our beings dissolve and become a part — 

The beating heart. 

The long-curved lashes of the eyes of Day 
Close the world in their shadows of gray. 

Is it the darkness that makes me bold ? 
I dare to touch Maud's silken fold ! 
Close to her side I steal ; 
Her warm breath on my cheek I feel ; 
I linger on her lips, while she is pressed 
In rapture to my throbbing breast. 

The rack of the morn without a rift. 

The clouds of the afternoon adrift. 

The glamour, the halo, the haze, the shade, 

In a fathomless grave together are laid — 

The Past has no ghost to rise and affright 

The wondrous might 

Of Love encased in the black mail of night ! 

The boat awaits — the boat ! the boat ! 
That in the storm kept bravely afloat ! 
That beat on the heaving billow's breast ! 
That topped the highest watery crest ! 

Ha ! danger must take another form 
To deter fond love than a passionate storm ! 
Thou hast no fear ? Then come, Maud, come, 
And the lake forever shall be our home ! 



CHAUTAUQUA. 385 

Together we row — Maud and I — in the boat ; 
On the stormy lake again we're afloat.' 



A snail, in his own individual shell, 

In the torture of self writhed and whorled. 

Hangs out of his window above a deep well, 
To take a wide view of the world. 

Protruding a finger-like sensitive socket, 
With cautious contemplative move, 

He draws out a glass from the out-turning pocket, 
And brings it to bear upon — love ! 

Love, deep in the circumscribed world of a well, 

In the form of a petal-like boat, 
Afloat on the crest of the surface-drip's swell, 

And in it, two fire-flies afloat ! 

Enraptured, the snail shuts his telescope-eye, 
And sets out Parnassus to climb ; 

The surface is slippy, the summit is high. 

But he sticks as he crawls up — in slime ! 



Yea ; it is true, 

The lake, the boat, and Maud and I 

Are but the figments of a lie ; 

The storm, the swoon, the dainty diction 

Of the erotic muse of fiction ; 

And ragged the rounds 

Of rhythmic sounds 

That compass the sensuous dreamer's bounds ; 

Yet, give the poor devil his due ! 

The poet must writhe in his shell, 

And look in a well, 

And see there earth, heaven, and hell — 

Yea, hopper humanity's infinite selves 



386 CHAUTAUQUA. 

To the tiniest elves 

Begot 

Of thought — 

The fire-flies in the snail's well view, 

Or Maud and I in the lake canoe. 



It is an innate habit of the Thought 

To mirror the great world according to 

The modes in which the great world is expressed ; 

In halves that are as nothing when alone, 

But when united are all powerful, 

Omnipotent in reproductive might, 

Evolving self into infinity — 

In halves, or male or female — man and woman. 

In highest form, down to the lowest hint — 

The push and pull of every mode of force — 

The in and out of every form of matter 

That vortices in individuality. 

And so as Man is halved in man and woman. 

Each individual is halved again — 

Divided thro' and thro' from brain to heart — 

Into a man and woman brain and heart. 

So there are male and female modes of thought, — 
Philosophy and Poesy, in point. 

The man, Philosophy, swells, from the one 
Unto the many, with expanding arms ; 
The woman, Poesy, shrinks from the many, 
And, with enfolding arms, clasps all in one. 
Philosophy resolves the Milky Way 
Into a myriad of revolving worlds ; 
While Poesy, dissolves the light of all 
Into the lustre of a single star — 
Into the soft light of a woman's eye. 
Philosophy creates a quadruped. 
From out the billion bipeds of the earth, 
And calls the monster Man — eternal Man ; 



CHAUTAUQUA. 387 

While Poesy reduces all to two, 

A man and woman, who are born to die, 

And who, between the cradle and the grave, 

Think in one soul the thoughts that millions 

think, 
Feel in one heart the throbs that millions feel. 
And people worlds in one — Storm on the Lake. 

And man and woman like, these modes of thought 

May live to adult life and hoary age 

And be abortive one without the other — 

Each unproductive, in their work apart, 

Of aught that lives a separate existence. 

Philosophy, a bachelor, shoots up 

Divergent rockets in the face of heaven, 

That point with fiery finger to the stars, 

Then burst in vain self-praise and fall as sticks ; 

While Poesy, a spinster, knits a sock 

That ravels at the top as fast as she 

Can draw the threads together at the toe. 

But joined as man and wife. Philosophy 

And Poesy bring forth a living being. 

Wherein the aspiration of the sire. 

Beyond the bourn of comprehension, 

Is blended with the fond love of the mother, 

As finite as an individual — 

A nameless being to the wise and good ; 

An idol, in a thousand difierent forms, 

Under as many names and signs, to those 

Who comprehend with only eye and ear. 

Here, reader, pause. Thou art Philosophy. 
Look out with thy accustomed sight, that dims 
Not in the dark'ning distance of the past, 
And see the head-width of the wedge of thought, 
That Poesy has narrowed to a point 
Within the storm-tossed boat on Lake Chautau- 
qua. 



388 CHAUTAUQUA. 

Dost see not in remotest, darkest Ind, 
The mystic argha, in whose ovoid depth 
The stream of life hath an exhaustless fount? 
Post see not, in the mist of Hebrew myth, 
This self-same argha in the mystic ark, 
That, while the world's engulfed in death, 
Bears in its womb the fruitful halves of life ? 
Dost see not in the blue of Grecian past, 
This same boat argos, filled with armed men, 
Who sail away to Colchian land, and steal 
The golden fleece of immortality ? 
Dost see not in the glamour of to-day 
The symbol of the argha in the arch, 
Through which in triumph march the hosts of 

men 
Flushed with the glow of vital victory 5 
And under which, in its grand form, the dome, 
The millions kneel in hope of life eternal ? 
Or wise Philosophy, dost see not in 
The very oar that trembles in Maud's hand — 
The oar propelling the light curved boat — 
The active ar that speaks the might of man 
In union with the passive ark of woman? 
The arrow winging from the curved bow 
Of Cupid's self, the very god of love ? 
The point that ears the mellow mould 
And makes of barrenness a teeming earth ? 
The ARM of man, that in the war of life. 
Strikes down the hosts of death opposing him ? 
The ART of man comprising all his work ? 
The ARDOR of consuming passion? — Yea, 
An ARiAN must thou be, and freely breathe 
The AIR of mystic lore. Philosophy, 
To mate with Lake Chautauqua's Poesy ! 
Within the very words of " Maud " and " I," 
Religion from infinity has lived. 
And to infinity will live — as long 
As man and woman give to thought their sex. 



CHAUTAUQUA. ' 389 

Maternity wombs in the sound of " M," 
From " mother " to the holy name of " Mary " ; 
Paternity's expressed for aye in " I," 
From "John" and "Jack" to "Jesus" and 
"Jehovah"! 



I come from fantasy far, far away, 
To fact at hand. 



Maud kneels, and folds her hands 
Together in the symbol of herself, 
Before her baby in the cradle lapped. 
And prays unto the Infant in the arms 
Of her that bare Him — Him the finite god 
Of woman thought and love concentrated — 
The Saviour of mankind a weakling babe, 
Within the comprehension of a child ! 
In sacred sympathy with her, I rise, 
Uphold my right hand tow'rd the farthest sky, 
And silently extend her words unto 
The infinite Incomprehensible, 
Beyond the wide reach of man's aspiration ! 



O blessed woman thought, sweet Poesy ! 
Without thee there had been no Infant Christ ! 
Ubiquity's too vague to be a god ! 



2X 



3^0 THE FIDDLER OF TIME, 



— 1877 — 
THE FIDDLER OF TIME. 



It was an old fiddler, as bare as his bow, 
In the arm and the time-beating leg, 

And as notched as his fiddle about the middle, 
As he sate upon a keg, — 

And scraped and straddled and see-sawed and 
scored, 

In an everchanging tune, 
Now fast, now slow, now high, now low. 

The while a crash, then a croon. 

And as fast as the hairs of his bow wore out, 
They grew in his long white beard ; 

While his strings were a part of the throbbing 
heart 
That in his music was heard — ■ 

That in his music was heard in the beat 

Of his bare and bony leg — 
Ha ! a fiddler was he as none other could be 

But Time on the Earth as a keg. 

Aye, kee-squeaky-squawky-tweedle-dee-dee, 
Went the fiddle and bow of Time, 

On the keg of the Earth in the mansion of Mirth, 
On the rocky ridge of Rhyme. 

When lo ! there appeared a succession of forms 

In the merry old fiddler's sight. 
Reviewing the Past from the first to the last 

As they waltzed into the light — 



THE FIDDLER OF TIME. 391 

Of the wick that sang and danced as it burned, 

Above the fiddler's skull, 
Till behold ! it shone like a golden sun 

Upon the moon at full ! 

Ha ! this is the Maiden of Matter, ywiss, 

This shapeless, graceless mass, 
In a gown of gray interstellary clay 

Diffused like a dust throughout space. 

And oho ! this partner that clasps her waist, 

And whirls her in his course, 
Around and around till her gown is wound — 

This dashing fellow is Force ! 

Kee-squeaky-squawky-tweedle-dee-dee, 

Around to left from right. 
Till lo ! "they are whirled into a World 

In the merry old fiddler's sight ! 

The world of Matter and Force in mask. 
In the guise of Man and Woman, 

The world of naught to feeling and thought, 
Till it takes a shape that is Human ! 



Aye, the world without the fiddler's skull. 
And the world within, its twin ; 

And the twain an ape at itself agape. 
Having turned itself outside in ! 



When lo ! as the world of Matter and Force, 

Revolved as a waltzing ball. 
In the light of the sun and the mirroring moon 

That illumined the fiddler's hall — 



392 THE FIDDLER OF TIME. 

There came and went another pair 

In the merry old fiddler's sight — 

Who but Dandy Day, in the rainbow's array, 

Whirling round with the Negress of Night — 

With the Negress of Night, in her gown of gauze, 

Of woven silence and jet. 
With a crown on her brow, and a silver bow 

In a golden galaxy set. 

Kee-squeaky-squawky-tweedle-dee-dee, 

Around in the waltz they go. 
Now there, now here, until a Year 

Is turned on their tuneful toe. 



When oho ! ha ! ha ! What a jolly pair 

Is this that comes into sight ? 
The lady in green is Summer, I ween. 

And the gentleman. Winter, in white. 

And was ever there seen such a gown of green, 

As the Lady of Summer wore. 
When with golden hair and faultlessly fair, 

She appeared on the fiddler's floor ? 



And in what a grim guise of snow and ice, 
Was the blustering Winter dressed ! 

While an icicle froze to the point of his nose 
And hung down to his breast ! 



Kee-squeaky-squawky-tweedle-dee-dee, 
Around go the Green and White, 

Till another pair in their turn appear 
In the merry old fiddler's sight 



THE FIDDLER OF TIME. 393 

Ho ! Will o' the Wind, on dainty toe, 

A filmy, fairy form, 
Till, gathering force as he whirls in his course, 

He sweeps away a Storm ! 

While his partner, behold, the Maid of the Mist, 

In a fleecy gray gown and hood, 
Till, whirling about to a Water- spout, 

She bursts into a Flood J 



Till oho ! ha ! ha ! the fiddler plays 

As never he played before. 
While the lightnings flash and the thunders crash, 

And the torrent redoubles its roar ! 



Kee-squeaky-squawky-tweedle-dee-dee, 

Around in majestic might, 
Till another pair in their turn appear 

In the merry old fiddler's sight. 

Ha ! Will o' the Wisp, thou wandering sprite, 
Dancing hither, and higher and higher, 

Till, swelling beneath a smoky wreath. 
He rages a furious Fire ! 

And the Nymph of the Wood whom he holds in 
his arms, 

As around and around he turns. 
Who is she in the sash of the hue of ash. 

But the Forest and all that burns ! 

Till oho ! ha ! ha ! the wild, wild waltz 
That makes the old fiddler shak€ — 

A Volcano of fire rising higher and higher. 
In the arms of a whirling Earthquake ! 



394 THE FIDDLER OF TIME. 

Kee-squeaky-squawky.-tweedle-dee-dee, 
Around in majestic might, 

Till another pair in turn appear 

In the merry old fiddler's sight. 



Ah, this is the Lady of Life, I ween, 
In the morn of a summer's day, 

The beauty and mirth of heaven and earth 
Involved in a clod of clay ! 



Her hair, the golden gleam of the dawn. 

Her eye, the blue above, 
Her form, the last in the living mould cast, 

Her heart, the heaven of Love ! 



And this is Death, this ghastly shade, 
This greedy, grinning ghoul. 

From out the gloom of a gaping tomb 
Where all is forbidding and fouL 



And he would waltz with the Lady of Life, 

This loathesome leper of old ; 
But before he placed his arm round her waist, 

The fiddler bade him hold. 



Aye, the fiddler of Time, with a quivering bow, 

And a thrill suspended leg. 
With gasping breath, commanded Death 

To take his fiddle and keg. 

Then away with a hop and a skip and a jump, 

He sped to the Lady's side. 
And with circling arms enfolded the charms 

Of heaven and earth in his bride. 



THE FIDDLER OF TIME. 395 

And around and around in a giddy waltz, 
Went the Lady of Life and Time, — 

'Round the keg of the Earth in the mansion of 
Mirth, 
On the rocky ridge of Rhyme. 

While, kee-squeaky-squawky-tweedle-dee-dee, 
Went the; fiddle and bow of Death, 

Till Time turned about without marking a note, 
And the Lady gasped for breath — 

And fell on the floor in a silent swoon ; 

When Death dropped the fiddle and bow, 
And, while Time stood aghast in the maze of the 
Past, 

Entombed the Lady in woe. 

And behold ! the wick was a ghastly hue, 

Where all was glitter and glare, 
And the maker of Mirth on the keg of the Earth, 

Sate in silence and despair. 

How long — how many long ages he sate. 

No human tongue can tell ; 
For the time-beating leg, as a motionless peg, 

Is still while the heart is in hell. 

He sate until — it happened so, 

The best of reasons why — 
Philosophy came to study the flame 

That cast its strange hue in his eye. 

When stumbling upon the fiddle and bow. 

Of the sad old fiddler of Time, 
The strings went twing-twang^ and Melody rang,* 

Once more on the ridge of Rhyme ! 



396 THE FIDDLER OF TIME. 

And the sad old fiddler awoke from his woe, 
And took up his fiddle and bow, 

And began to play — from grave to gay — 
When the wick began to glow. 



And behold ! the Philosopher turned him about 

In the whirl of a merry dance, 
With a partner that came with the glow of the 
flame, 

On an errand for old Dame Chance — 



Sweet Poesy ! Ah, what a winsome wench, 

In the fiddler's staring eye, 
As she whirled and whirled into a New World 

In the arms of Philosophy ! 



Kee-squeaky-squawky-tweedle-dee-dee, 
Goes the fiddle and bow of Time, 

On the keg of the Earth in the mansion of Mirth, 
On the rocky ridge of Rhyme. 



And around go the twain in a wild, wild waltz, 

While the fiddler stares aghast, 
As anon they assume in the gloom of the tomb 

The form of the buried Past — 



Of the Lady of Life in the arms of — Himself! 

When, whirling with bated breath, 
He beheld her fall in the reeling hall, 

While he danced to the fiddling of Death! 



THE LAST MAN. 3^97 

— 1878— ' 
THE LAST MAN. 



He stands upon an arc of the round earth 
Revolving in a triple whirl through space ; 
His back, a line directing downward to 
The centre of the earth — the Finite Point ; 
And upward to the Infinite — the Naught, 
Until, within .the triple whirl of the 
Revolving earth, it is involved in it. 
And at its centre finite made, 

Henceforth, 
To whirl, involving and evolving, till 
It winds into the thought of 

The Last Man. 

His eyes with the horizon form a blade, 
That, whirling wheresoever may the world. 
Bisects the Finite from the Infinite — 
The part from an hypothecated whole ; 
As it, as well, bisects himself in twain. 
The part below the eyes from that above, 
The mortal man from 

An immortal Soul. 

Within the concave of his skull, above 
The line of the horizon and his eyes — 
The counterpart organic of the dome 
Dividing the in-known from the unknown, — 
Aye, what is the self-comprehensible 
Within his skull, but the organic form 
Of a self-comprehensible without — 
Within the greater skull — of whom ? 

Of God !■ 
2Y 



398 THE LAST MAN. 

Whence came he ? From the Infinite. But how ? 

By the involving of the Infinite 

Within the whirl of the revolving earth, 

Until, made finite at its central point, 

A newborn eddy set out in its course, 

Involving and evolving as it turned, 

Until, above the line of the horizon, 

Behold ! he stands revealed unto himself 

The Finite Son — of whom ? 

The Infinite ; 
With an immortal soul, the Son of God ! 

But when was he begat? There is no Time 
Between the Finite and the Infinite. 
In the relationship between the Son 
Of God and God, he Is — 

And there an end. 
The soul is as eternal as its God, 

But, mark, between him and the finite earth, 

And other and the myriad forms involved 

In individuality unto 

His comprehension, there is Time — a Past 

In which there are relationships 

Of first and last — of sequence — Birth and 

Death, 
As eddy after eddy occupies 
A certain space and time in revolution. 
The First Birth was the centre of the Earth ; 
The Last Birth was the finite first whirl still 
Involving and evolving outward from 
Its starting point — 

It is the Thought that gleams 
Along the blade of the horizon and 
His vision, that, as the earth rolls, bisects 
The finite Past from out the Infinite — 
. The Future — God ! — 

The Heav'n of the Last Man ! 



THE LAST MAN. 399 

The Thought of the Last Man a Thought of 

Heaven ! 
The farthest evolution from the centre, 
The nearest evolution unto God — 
The finite soul of the Last Man, 

A Soul 
Evolving with existence into God ! 



His brothers aggregate the wedge of Life 

That heads with him, the highest type of Man, 

And points at the horizon in the whirl 

That simulates the centre of the earth ; 

Or heads within him as a whole, and points 

At a cell-centre whirling in his blood ; 

Or heads within him as he stands, the Last, 

And points, back in the Past, at the First Man - 

The first relationship of Force and Matter 

Involved in individuality 

By eddying within the stream of space — 

The first-born son of God — 

Now, the Last Man. 



He is the sum organic of the World. 

His beating heart, the rhythm recurring of 

The earth in its compounded revolution. 

What has been felt, within the wedge of life 

That heads in him, he feels — and more: that 

which 
Is severed from the Infinite by the 
Revolving blade of his far-reaching scythe — 
The line of the horizon and his eyes — 
And whirled into the vortex of his Passion ; 
And so, what has been thought within the Past, 
He thinks — and more ; as round and round the 

earth 
Goes in its triple whirl, and the long blade 



400 THE LAST MAN. 

Carves out the Finite from the Infinite 
With an extending point, 

In his abstraction. 

Ho ! ho ! what thrills of bliss he feels, unfelt 
Before by any other living thing, 
And never felt again until a form 
Attains the point of growth which he has passed ! 
And what bright visions of involving Heaven, 
Unseen, before the sweeping scythe of sight 
Has cut them from the brain of God in swaths, 
And mowed them in the skull of 

The Last Man ! 

Aye, the Last Man -'— Behold the monarch of 

The whirling worlds innumerable that 

Have yet revolved within his recognition ! 

Erect upon an arc of the round earth 

Revolving in a triple whirl through space — 

His eyes with the horizon on a line — 

The finger of the dial on the clock 

That ticks within the heart-beat in his breast, 

And strikes — as strike it will, whene'er the maw 

Of the revolving earth will be unfilled 

Within a desert of diluted space — 

When, dying both of inanition, Earth 

And the Last Man, their decomposing dust 

Will be devoured by other orbs unknown. 

Then will the clock have struck the hour of 

Doom, 
And into naught have vanished the Last Man ! — 
A recollection in 

The Mind of God. 

Unto himself no longer the Last Man, 
But lo ! the thought of 

The Eternal God ! 



THE MEANING OP THE MONUMENT, 401 



— 1887 — 
THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT 



Read, at the dedication of the Soldiers' Monument, erected 
by the Major A. M. Haeper Post, No. 181, Department of 
Pennsylvania, Grand Army of the Republic, at Braddock, 
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Saturday, September 10th, 

1887. 



Upon a height, whence the delighted eye 

Opes to the sentient mirror of the mind, 

A vast and varied vision of the Course 

Of Empire to the Gateway of the West : 

The mirky vale of the Monongahela ! 

Where erst the Briton in his coat of blood 

Braved openly the Redskin and the Frank, 

Or veiled or walled by the primaeval wood, 

To fall before his unseen enemy 

As falls the Briton worthy of the name ; 

Where now a myriad of industries, 

Within the inhulled acres of the stream 

And inwalled mile-squares of the strath, present 

A peerless exposition of the Age 

Of Fire and Electricity enthralled 

And bound unto their work with bands of steel. 

Instead of the o'erpowered of mankind ! ^ 

The Age, as well — ( and herein hark and mark 

The measure of all measures of the march 

Of Man from apedom to enlightenment : ) — 

The Age of Many moulded into One ; 

The Real interwrought with the Ideal ; 

The human Mite made superhuman Monster ; 



402 THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT. 

The Finite, Infinite in time and space ! 

The Age of the man-monster Corporation ! 

Compounding, haply, thousands of mankind — 

A Jove-like individuality 

In comprehension and accomplishment ! 

The Age of Combinations without end — 

The Club, the Party, the Society; 

The League, the Union, and the Brotherhood ; 

The Clique, the Circle, and the Coterie ; 

The Pool, the Corner, and the Syndicate ; 

The Guild, the Congress, the Association — 

Of Coalition and Amalgamation — 

Organization and Consolidation — 

Cooperation and Concorporation ! — 

Of Pygmy States, like individuals, 

Confederating and creating thus 

Gigantic Governments ; of interstate 

And international amenities ; 

Until, behold ! within the blue field of 

A compound nation's flag, a firmament 

Of eight and thirty state-ensymboled stars ! 

And under it, the representatives 

Of all the color classes of mankind, 

The White, the Black, the Yellow, Red, and 

Brown, 
Commingling their organic mind and might 
In a grand continental unit}^ ! 
A fateful fact, betokening anear 
A union of the nations of the earth — 
An age of universal comity ! 



Upon this height, a motley multitude. 

Convened from all the airts the wind can blow, 

To dedicate a monumental shaft 

Unto the glory of the nation's dead — 

The individuals war-sacrificed 

That the United States might still subsist, 



THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT. 403 

The Giant One of Many Pygmy States — 
The Constitutional Concorporation — 
The fateful fact forever, it has been : 
The wonder and the glory of the globe ! 



Ah, me ! the folly and absurdity ! 

This granite shaft, which, howsoever huge, 

Of comely shape, and wrought with faultless skill, 

Can be distinguished from a blasted oak 

In broad daylight scarce half a league away ! 

The while the Union of America 

Presents, in its indissoluble self, 

An infinitely grander monument ! 

Compared with which, the crematory flame 

Immountained on the rivage of the Nile 

Above the dust of Egypt's royal dead, * 

Sinks into the surrounding sea of sand 

And as a prodigy is seen no more ! 



Nay, nay ! beneath this superficial sheen 
Of folly and absurdity, there is 
A world of wisdom and substantial sense : 
Perhaps, beyond the compass of the wright 
That wrought it, building better than he knew. 
While it is raised unto the nation's dead. 
And glorified with their immortal names. 
Yet is it raised not unto them so much 
As the surrounding quick and the unborn 
And unbegotten of the future's womb : 
A granite-lived interrogation point — 
An everlasting what ? a deathless why ? 
To fix the sight afar, attract anear. 
Incite emotion to expand the lungs. 
And prick the apprehension to enquire. 
What means this monument to me and mine ? 
That, haply, in the answer which unto 



404 THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT. 

The asking is as certain to succeed, 
As Truth betimes upon the heels of Try, 
The questioner may see him in his true 
Relations with the age in which he lives; 
May learn the obligations of the most 
Evolved, expanded, and exalted life 
Earthfast humanity has yet attained ; 
And lay these lessOns in his heart of hearts 



Betwixt the lowest and the highest of 
The billion of the bipeds Of the earth 
Embodied in the mythic^ monster Man, 
There are as many stages or degrees 
Of growth as there are individuals; 
But, for the nonce, they meiy be reckoned two : 
Antagonistic and antipodal ; 
The ord and end * of our humanity ; 
The Savage Man and the Enlightened Man. 
The one — the Savage — living for himself ; 
But one remove above the beast of prey ; 
Achieving naught ; accumulating naught ; 
His life and death, a bubble blown and burst ! 
The ultimatum of his ethics this — 
Self-preservation is the first of laws. 
The other — the Enlightened — living a 
Composite and intercommingled life 
Among a myriad of fellow men, 
Of many-armed and hydra-headed monsters. 
And such chimseras of complexity. 
Compounding Man and all the elements. 
Fire, water, earth, and air, — Machinery ! — 
As never entered a Hellenic dream ! 
Achieving miracles e'en to himself; 
Accumulating wisdom, worth, and wealth ; 
Diffusing might and mind around the world ; 
His life and death, a gain and loss to millions ! 
The ultimatum of his ethics that 



THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT. 405 

Embodied in the Christ ui^on the Cross, 
Self-sacrifice is the divine behest ! 

And since all living things, that body forth 

The fullness of their forms and complex pow'rs. 

Have been developed from a lower to 

A higher and more complicated state, 

The ultimatum of enlightenment 

Incarnate in an individual 

Has been evolved — as well within himself, 

As in his world of kindred as a whole — 

Through a succession of inferior forms, 

From lowest beast to highest savage type. 

Now, hark and mark again ! Albeit born 

Within the range of vision from this height. 

Yet is the individual not born 

In the perfection of his form and pow'rs, 

Like the Athenian Maid in panoply. 

Burst from the cleft skull of Olympian Zeus ; 

And in his evolution he may stop 

At any of the myriad of rounds 

Between the first and last, and so remain 

Or beast or savage, as the case may be ! 

Behooves it hence, the sire to set before 
His son such monumental shafts as this ! 
That, moved thereby in body and in mind. 
The halfling ^ may be lifted and enlarged 
Into a whole of comprehension, and 
Become, as soldier, sailor, saint, or sage — 
As artist, architect, or artisan — 
As miner, merchant, manufacturer — 
As shipper, showman, chemist, counselor — 
As actor, engineer, or what you will — 
A vital part of one or more of the 
2Z 



406 THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT. 

Composite corporations of the age 
Involved in and involving the great globe : 
A conscious part- whole, man- world ultimate ! 

instant of heart-thrilling ecstasy ! 

The epoch-marking moment of his life, 

The youth, — involving his environment, — 

Receiving an impulsion here or there, — 

Attaining his full pow'rs unconsciously, — 

Emerges suddenly from savagery 

Into enlightenment, a round, full Man ! 

When, haply, he, for the first time, upholds 

His oped right hand, and swears a solemn oath. 

By his ensymboled manhood and his God ! ^ 

Or when he dons his country's coat of blue, 

His bosom heaving with a new-born pride, 

He realizes in fast flashing thoughts. 

He is absolved from self! his being merged 

In the existence of his country ! A3^e, 

His arm, henceforth, in part his country's might, 

His heart, henceforth, in part his country's honor ! 

His life involved in and involving millions ! 

Aye, aye ! albeit raised unto the dead. 
This shaft is raised unto the quick as well ! 
To make the living feel heroic thrills ; 
To make the living think heroic thoughts ; 
Involve the verve and virtues of the most 
Advanced and valiant in the march of Man ; 
And taste the glory of self-sacrifice ! 
To fit the player on the stage of life. 
To take the Patriot's and Hero's part. 
Ere he is summoned by the fates to act — 
Achieve ennobling deeds, and leave his name 
Engraved in granite by a grateful world ! 
For, surely as the flow'r precedes the fruit, 
The Patriot and Hero of true worth. 



THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT. 407 

Are never such in act and deed, until 

They have been first in feeling and in thought ! 



^ " The scene of this memorable conflict [ the defeat of an 
English army, under the command of Major General Edward 
Braddock, by a detachment of French and Indian allies, from 
Fort Duquesne, under the command of Commandant Lionel de 
Beaujeu, in 1755, ] presents one of the most remarkable indus- 
trial expositions to be found on the continent. From the bluflf 
overlooking the valley, are to be seen in one view three [ four ] 
several lines of railway, with trestle work, river bridge, and 
tunnel; the Monongahela river, with lock and dam, steam- 
boats, coal fleets, rafts, etc. ; on the hillsides, the mouths of the 
coal pits, and, descending the s.teeps to the tipples at the 
water's edge, the railway inclines ; in the valley, the mag- 
nificent plant of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works [and Fur- 
naces, ] and besides the varied works of the industrial town of 
Braddock near by — the only monument to the memory of the 
ill-starred British general. The observer of the scene cannot 
refrain from contrasting it with that of the 9th of July, 
1755." — Souih'western Pennsylvania in Song and Story, 1878, p. 37. 

^Several specious Egyptologists to the contrary notwith- 
standing, the word " pyramid " is of Greek origin and signifies 
fire-like, or rather, funeral pyre-like ; and the pyramids of 
Egypt, accordingly, (in a country destitute of fuel and given 
in a myriad of ways to substitute the semblance for the sub- 
stance, ) are supposed to symbolize the crematory flame of In- 
dia: of course, involving all the associated ideas of being 
cleansed by fire, purification, and absorption into the Divine 
Essence through the visible manifestation of the Deity which 
fire was and is believed to be by many millions of the people 
of the earth. 

^The prime signification of the word "mythic" is verbal, 
or spoken : from a Greek word, signifying a word, which is 
the correspondent of English " mouth. " 

*This good old English phrase, of Saxon origin, signifying 
first and last, beginning and end, should not be permitted to 
lapse into desuetude ; for it is of value in poetic composition, 
if not also in prose. 

» Assuming the English and Scottish words, "haspat," 
"haspenald," "haspan," and " haspin," (signifying a youth. 



408 THE MEANING OF THE MONUMENT. 

stripling, hobbledehoj', half boy and half man, and variously 
derived by lexicographers from English " half-span " or " half- 
spun ; " Scottish " halflin," i. e., " half-long," according to 
Jamieson ; and Welsh, " hespwrn," a young sheep, ) to be the 
equivalents of " halfling," if not indeed variations or corrup- 
tions of the same, an effort is made here to add or restore to 
the language a very useful word : to supply the place of which, 
perhaps, there is nothing better than malagrugous " hobblede- 
hoy." 

'■' Since the symbolism involved in our everyday life — the 
silent substitute of language which we have inherited from our 
remote oriental ancestors, who, presumably, were approximately 
the same as the commonalty of India to-day — is an inexplica- 
ble enigma to many seekers after the good and sufficient cause 
there is for the existence of everything, the pointer, finger 
board, or "bishop's finger," of the poem, it is believed, will 
show the way to a full and satisfactory understanding of much 
that generally is unintelligible and seemingly void of idea in 
our manners and customs, our art, and even our religion. 
Among the ancients — the Romans, Greeks, etc., — as among 
the Indians to-day, the right side of the body, doubtless from 
the fact that the right arm is generally the strong-er, was con- 
sidered the man-half of the whole; the right hand, the sign 
and symbol of a man ; and the right hand uplifted, the sign 
and symbol of the male principle extended and exalted in- 
finitely, or, in other words, the silent expression of the idea of 
a Man-God, a Heavenly Father, and the like. With the hand 
opened and the fingers forming a point, the idea of an indi- 
visible Deity was expressed ; with the fourth and fifth fingers 
lowered, and the first, second and third upheld and parted, a 
godhead divisible into a masculine Trimurti or Trinity ; and 
with the fingers otherwise disposed, other ideas, which it is not 
necessary here to indicate. The opposite sex ideas involved in 
our forms of worship are given in the preceding pages in the 
poems " Atlantis " and " Chautauqua." 



END OF VOLUME I. 



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